It seems appropriate that I’m sitting here with a VHS copy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode The Hellcats by my side (and not with the express intention of mentioning it for this article). Upon the day of the release of the Rifftrax Live show of Sharknado, I felt the urge to throw some of my thoughts and opinions about MST3K and its spin-offs out there just to have a little bit of perspective on the sudden growth in popularity of riffing on movies. And I already went into a pretty solid amount of detail about the show’s history when I reviewed the Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release of the movie of MST3K, so I won’t bother doing any sort of a recap. Chances are high that if you’re reading this article, you’re a fan of the show. So let’s just dive into it. [Read on here...]

A Love of the Worst

Mystery Science Theater 3000 celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, as well as the return of the classic Turkey Day Marathon that was streamed live on YouTube (which was a tradition during the show’s original run). It’s hard to believe that a show this smart and funny has been off the air for nearly fifteen years. As for me, I’d consider myself a novice when it comes to how long I’ve been associated with the show. I’ve spoken to several fans who have been followers of the show quite religiously from its humble beginnings at KTMA. Truth be told, I’ve only really been watching the show for about four years or so, which isn’t really enough to consider myself a super-fan (if you want to revoke my fan card, then by all means you can have it). But ever since I began watching it, I’ve had it on heavy rotation, and that includes its spin-offsRifftraxand Cinematic Titanic. I watch an episode of the show a couple of times a week, so I think I’m pretty well-educated on it.

I’m also a lover of unintentionally bad movies, so the two things go together well for me. The proof is in the pudding that many movies have been given a second life by pointing out how awful and poorly put together they are and finding enjoyment in them because of it. The lack of film language, poorly-written dialogue, stories that don’t make much sense, poor lighting and poor cinematography are a recipe for an unintentionally bad movie. Other internet shows like Best of the Worst from the folks at Red Letter Media (another favorite of mine) have really helped to further popularize finding the fun in watching the failures of others, namely, filmmakers. In the age of everything in a media form becoming self-aware, coming under extreme scrutinization, or just being lampooned or referenced for the sake of it, it’s no surprise that MST3K still has a devoted, and continuously growing, fan base.

However, the simple days of MST3K are long gone. There wasn’t a TV show like it at the time, and nay before or since. The crew behind Rifftrax, which includes Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, have had some great success by continuing the legacy and riffing on a variety of different movies and making them available for download or releasing them to DVD. But the show is boiled down to its essence, however, as they're only interested in the actual riffing of the movies and not worrying so much about the sketch work (in other words, no bots, no theme songs, and no characterizations). It’s just three funny guys talking about movies, essentially. They had previously attempted some sketch work with the ill-fated Film Crew series (which only racked up four episodes), but it didn’t really work in their favor. It felt forced and unnecessary, which is most likely the reason why they didn’t try to do it again. After all, the reason that everyone watched MST3K in the first place was to hear the riffs on the movies. Sure the sketches were well done and very funny, but it’s not the main draw of the show.

It’s also important to discuss why Rifftrax is just as enjoyable as MST3K. For me, it’s not just the riffs themselves; it's also the people involved in the making of it. These particular groups of people (including the folks from the now-defunct Cinematic Titanic) are the reason why MST3K worked in the first place. That’s why riffing done by other groups of people has never worked for me. It isn’t fun or even particularly funny watching an imitation of something that’s being done much better by someone else. I try to give everything a fair shake, but it just doesn’t work as well with different people behind it. A fter you’ve watched the original show for a while you start to feel a kind of kinship or bond with these people. They’re enormously funny and talented, and they’re the entire reason why it works. What doesn’t work, however, is when the integrity of the material and the impetus behind the original idea are forgotten or just missing altogether.

When Bad Becomes Commercial

Now I’m not going to get overly dramatic on this next point, but it’s a sore one for me and it needs to be addressed. After all, I’ve just spent several paragraphs covering my love for MST3K, as well as Rifftrax, so attacking them outright won’t do. That was why I brought up the fact that I’m not a super-fan. I can see the flaws when they appear and understand when something’s not working, which a lot of fans can’t do because of how blinded their love for it is. It gives me a bit more of a perspective. And this isn’t condemnation by any means, but more of an observation. I can choose my entertainment and leave the rest for others to enjoy if they so choose.

While the crew at Rifftrax have done a very fine job at keeping the riffing alive and digging up some new trashy cinema to take jabs at, they've also decided that everything else is fair game. They’ve riffed on big blockbuster movies like the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series, as well as film classics like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Wizard Oz. They even riffed Casablanca, one of the most respected and well-loved movies ever made. From a monetary perspective, I can understand why they would do this. Riffing on bigger movies might bring in larger audiences (which it probably has) to their website for more economic purposes, but the integrity of the material now stands on shaky ground, where as before, it held its own. That’s not to say that every piece of material that MST3K ever did was a winner either, but it at least stayed true to its original notion of making fun of bad movies to make them more enjoyable. Now it’s sometimes backwards wherein a movie that’s generally accepted as good or even great is being poked fun at, and it just doesn’t work, at least for me.

Basically what these fellows are saying is that films like Troll 2, The Room and The Apple are just as worthy of jabs as movies like the X-Men series, and they’re wrong. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve began to question the riffers' tastes themselves. Are there ANY movies that they watch that they can enjoy and NOT make fun of? Movies are all about the experience; you’re experiencing a piece of cinema, and you get something good out of it, so why would you want to ruin that? It’s a valid question, because that’s a sad movie-watching life for anyone who can’t draw any kind of pleasure from something that, while it may have flaws, is enjoyable and worth someone’s time to not just watch, but absorb and take home with them. It sounds a bit pretentious, I know, but that’s the way a good movie works on its audience. There’s sometimes a fine line between enjoying a movie and finding the flaws in it that take you out of the movie, and the truly good ones rise above that line.

You also have to take a step back and ask yourself this question: would the original crew from MST3K (from both the Joel AND Mike years) riffed on Casablanca? Obviously, due to the rights issues involved with something like that, the answer is, of course, no, but it’s also no because it would have been against the whole idea of, again, watching bad movies and making fun of them to make them more enjoyable. And I’m not just ranting and raving here. I sat down and watched the riffed version of Raiders of the Lost Ark all the way through just to give it a chance, and I didn’t laugh once, not even a little. You know why? Because there’s nothing funny about a well-made, well-executed movie that does everything that it’s supposed to do and not be a complete mess.

But on the other hand, you have a movie like Sharknado, and the many other movies like it. There now seems to be a market for making intentionally bad movies, mainly for people who don’t know, don’t care or don’t understand the difference. Personally, I think it’s misguided and, more often than not, a useless idea, but the popularity of these movies makes me wrong, I suppose. You could also argue that something like Transformers is a terrible movie and is being marketed in much the same way as Sharknado, but that’s a whole other can of worms that I don’t want to open right now.

Movies like Manos: The Hands of Fate, Space Mutiny, Devil Fish, and pretty much anything made by Charles B. Pierce, Ed Wood or Coleman Francis, are guaranteed slices of a rotten, but somehow tasty, pie. And that’s where the humor springs from. If you have a sense of humor and understand how movies SHOULD work, then watching them without the riffing should yield plenty of laughs for you. The riffing just makes it better, but riffing on an intentionally bad movie like Sharknado? I’m not sold on that one. The idea of it just seems wrong to me. But I should point out that I haven’t seen the film and that I WILL be attending the live riffing of it, so we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll add an addendum to this article or something.*

All I’m trying to say here is that unintentionally bad movies, while they have a smaller audience and do not figure into something more lucrative, are what work aesthetically. I can’t be on board with riffing on a movie that’s good, mainly because I’m too much of a film fan for that. It should be noted that Rifftrax DOES still riff on bad movies while still tossing a riff out for something like Spider-Man 2, so I can’t just disregard them completely. They’re still making material that I’m interested in watching that fits the unintentionally bad bill, especially the short films that they riff on. I just don’t understand their process of riffing the good movies, but to each their own.

There’s also an audience of people who believe that riffing on movies in this way is detrimental to the films themselves. They believe that everything is valid, no matter how egregious. People like Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino, in particular, aren’t fans of MST3K for that very reason. And I can see their viewpoint, but I don’t totally agree with it. Everything IS valid, of course (and my entire argument about which movies SHOULD be riffed on might seem invalid upon what I’m about to say), but In the age of audio commentaries for DVD and Blu-ray releases, as well as massive film festivals where groups of people get together to watch movies and, most of the time, talk all the way through them by repeating lines or interacting with them in some way, then riffing on movies is just another form of enjoying them. There may be some disgust on the surface, but underneath, there’s something more important going on.

Loving Bad Movies in the Future

It may just be a job to some of the people who do it, but there’s always some genuine love involved in riffing on bad movies. It sounds crazy for an outsider looking in, but no one spends as much time talking about or watching movies of a very low caliber over and over again without deriving some enjoyment from them. The people that do it (for the most part) love doing it, and in a way, love the movies themselves, warts and all. I’m actually a big fan of The Room, and I would consider it one of my favorite films, despite its being labeled “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.” And I’m not trying to be ironic about it either. I genuinely love the movie, as well as movies like Manos: The Hands of Fate. Manos, in particular, is NOT one of the worst movies ever made in the way that most people have touted it to be, in my opinion (the same goes for Plan 9 From Outer Space). It may seem that way upon your first watch, but once you’ve seen it a couple of times, you begin to realize that it’s NOT completely incompetent after all. It has a beginning, a middle and an ending, and how many bad movies can say that, not to mention the Hollywood blockbusters of today?

And If anything was evidenced by the previous MST3K Turkey Day Marathon, it’s that there’s still an audience for MST3K. Rumors have been circulating that the show’s creators might be attempting to bring it back in some form (most likely online). Whether it succeeds or fails will likely depend on the cast, but then again, some do settle for less. As I stated previously, it was the show’s original line up of people that made it worth watching. All these years later, it’s still one of the main reasons why fans continue to watch the show, and why Rifftrax continues to thrive.

And on that note, push the button Frank.

-Tim Salmons

* I DID see the live Rifftrax Live show of Sharknado and "I liked it very much." I think those riffers realized something about the movie, which is something I realized while watching it for the first time. While it's an intentionally bad movie, it's also full of unintentional comedic moments that make it highly enjoyable. I won't go into detail for those who haven't seen it, but if you're a fan of bad movies, I say give it a shot. And yes, I'm eating a little bit of croooooooooooow on this one, but I'm trying to keep it honest, as well.

Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep...

A Nightmare on Elm Street was first released in 1984 by New Line Cinema, being written and directed by Wes Craven. Since its inception, it has spawned seven sequels, a TV series and a remake of the original film. It has also managed to invoke more fandom and fanaticism than any other horror franchise in history.

As an extremely avid movie geek, I too have been a part of that fandom since I was an eight year old just getting into movies. I owned all of the films on VHS and bought all of the magazines, posters, comics and soundtracks that I could get my hands on. Like most people, I also had the obligatory Halloween costume: the hat, sweater and glove combination. I even went so far as trying to build my own Freddy glove out of soda cans, steak knives and work gloves. I was later amused to find out that I wasn’t the only one doing these things. People from all over the world have been constructing Freddy gloves in their basements and garages and selling them over the internet for many years. There haven’t been too many film franchises that have driven people to this seemingly maniacal and obsessive behavior, and that level of fandom shouldn’t be taken for granted. [Read on here...]

Looking at the Nightmare series today in retrospect, you realize just how interesting the films really are. Being developed and executed under different directors has given each entry in the series its own distinctive flavor and feel, which was also accomplished using very little money. Even without a so-called big budget, you never get the feeling that they were made by mostly inexperienced filmmakers or financed by a fledgling movie studio. They have the look and feel of A level films and deliver on much of the same level. They all have their pros and cons and aren’t considered by the general populace as masterpieces of the genre, but they’re far too quirky, fun and inventive to be ignored or forgotten very easily.

The Nightmare series also introduced the world to one of cinema’s most popular and enduring icons: Freddy Krueger. Robert Englund’s masterful portrayal as the dark and sinister dream demon who was burned alive by the parents of his victims during his homicidal rampage as a human being has always been a sort of iconography of great character acting. The original approach of the character couldn’t have been any more primordial: he invades the dreams of his victims and kills them in their sleep. He’s quite vicious yet relishes what he does, making him more of an anti-hero to audiences than a villain. As the sequels followed, Freddy became less of a ruthless and terrifying night stalker and more of a figure of fun that would throw a joke or two in during his deadly spree in teenage dreamland. He became so overexposed that it was difficult to find him scary anymore. Ultimately, it didn’t matter much to the public and audiences lined up to see him dish it out to a whole new set of teenagers, sequel after sequel. Freddy’s menace and attitude combined with the fedora, the red and green sweater, the glove and the burned flesh all combined into an indelible image that has embedded itself into popular culture, making the Nightmare series not just merely a set of slasher films, but a culture-defining ethos that will live forever.

With all of that in mind, let’s take a look at the entire series film by film. To do that, we’ll need to start at the very beginning...

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Wes Craven, who was fresh off of the mildly successful Swamp Thing (with the grindhouse classics The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes already under his belt) had crafted the story of A Nightmare on Elm Street on his own, but no one in the industry had any faith in it. The main inspiration for the story came from three non-correlated articles in the L.A. Times about individuals whom had died due to Brugada Syndrome (otherwise known as Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome). Craven found the articles intriguing and soon developed a script based around the idea that people could die in their dreams. Even his closest colleague Sean Cunningham (director of the original Friday the 13th) didn’t believe that the idea was scary enough to be made into a successful film.

After several failed attempts at getting studios interested in the script, things were looking grim for the project. That is, until Craven met Robert Shaye, an independent film distributor who was looking to finance a film that might generate a healthy profit for his distribution company New Line Cinema (no more than a one-room office in Manhattan at the time). Shaye recognized the potential in the project and felt very strongly that an audience could relate to the material because everyone goes to sleep at night. With their partnership formed, Craven and Shaye set out to seek funding for it and gather together the talent to get it made.

Originally, Craven had envisioned Freddy to be a much older man, but found that the energy and stamina needed to portray him could only be found in younger men. British actor David Warner (The Omen) was originally cast in the role but left the project due to other obligations. Craven soon found what he was looking for in a young Robert Englund. Fresh off of the hit TV series V, Englund was the top candidate for the role. As a classically trained actor, he brought a swagger, stance and personality to the part, while also being able to reach into his inner dark recesses to make his character both sinister and nasty. Craven also found a great protagonist in Heather Langenkamp, whose ‘girl next door’ persona, as well inner strength, gave Freddy his greatest and most memorable opponent, Nancy Thompson. With the casting complete and all of the remaining pieces of the puzzle in place, principal photography was soon underway.

Shot in Los Angeles in less than 4 weeks at break-neck speed, the filmmakers did their best to utilize the talent and tools at hand to make something special. Even with its meager budget, A Nightmare on Elm Street managed to pull off some wonderful visual moments and fantastic mechanical special effects (Tina’s death scene leaps to mind). The film also cleverly blurred the line between dreams and reality, leaving the viewer not quite sure if the characters were awake or asleep. Freddy himself was left in the shadows and often obstructed from view so that the audience never got a really good look at him, which allowed the audience’s imagination to fill in the holes (a Hitchcock device that turned out to be very effective).Although the cast and crew got along well during filming, it was Wes Craven and Robert Shaye who often had heated disagreements over budget and story content. Shaye felt that the original ending was all wrong and that audiences shouldn’t go out with a happy ending, but instead with a big scare and twist. It’s a decision that forever affected the history of the franchise (even though there were no thoughts of it actually becoming a franchise at that point). Craven wasn’t happy with the changing the ending, feeling that it was demeaning to the rest of the film (as well as a bit confusing on a story level), but compromised on his producer’s demands. And although the matter was settled, the relationship was strained thereafter and Craven wouldn’t return to the director’s chair until much later in the series.

On November 9, 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street was independently released by New Line Cinema in a limited engagement and a week later nationwide. The word of mouth on the film quickly spread and helped push it into becoming a success, turning a profit almost immediately. This signaled to Robert Shaye that there could be a gold mine in the character of Freddy Krueger. A sequel was soon rushed into production to cash in on the original’s popularity and, eventually, help give New Line Cinema a boost into the majors.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

After the fallout between Wes Craven and Robert Shaye, it was clear that Craven had little interest in returning for a sequel. Jack Sholder, who had directed Alone in the Dark for New Line three years prior, was cutting together trailers for the studio during development on Freddy’s Revenge and was offered the job of directing the film. A fresh face in the make-up department, Kevin Yagher, was also brought in to redesign Freddy’s make-up, taking over for makeup artist David Miller. Yagher would go on to work on the makeup effects for the next two films in the series. However, the most troubling bit during the casting process was that Robert Englund wasn’t brought back to play Freddy… at first. An uncredited extra was used instead with the idea that he would be overdubbed later. At that time, both the Friday the 13th and Halloween series had managed to turn a profit without bringing the same actor back every time to play Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, respectively. Because of Englund’s impact on the character, this couldn’t be accomplished with Freddy Krueger. Once filming had begun, the mistake was quickly realized and Englund was brought back on board.

However, that wasn’t the only problem that plagued the shoot and eventual release of Freddy’s Revenge, but it was the only one that got solved to everyone’s satisfaction. Taking a close look at the film, you can clearly see that no one had a clear vision of it becoming scripture for a fan base. Everything about it, from role reversals of the characters, major script issues and some terribly-executed special effects (except for Jesse’s transformation), shows that it was meant solely to be a quick cash-in and wasn’t given more time in the development process. Other problems with the film were inherent in the original script itself. In the film, Freddy literally metamorphosizes through the character of Jesse and steps into reality to do his dirty work. According to the mythology of the series, Freddy is always in a dream no matter what. To have him running around at a pool party terrorizing teenagers rubbed not only fans the wrong way, but even Englund himself.

For years, the most-talked about subject having to do with Freddy’s Revenge was the role reversals of the lead characters. Usually in the series (and most other horror films), the protagonist of the story was played by a woman. This time around, they chose instead to make the lead a male, which caused the homoerotic subtext of the story to be heightened without it meaning to be. Screenwriter David Chaskin recently admitted that he had intended for there to be just such a subtext, but nowhere near as prevalent as what wound up in the final film. According to the filmmakers themselves, no one had even an inkling that it could be looked at as a story about a young man coming to terms with his sexuality. It was an issue that wasn’t addressed until many years later, but nevertheless, it remains a hot topic amongst fans.

Despite all of its problems, Freddy’s Revenge was still released on November 1, 1985 as is, and was a greater financial success than the first film. It was snubbed by critics and unfortunately left a bad taste in the mouths of fans, and both the success mixed with the negative reactions to it indicated two things to Robert Shaye: that this could be an on-going franchise and that they also had to try harder in delivering a better quality product to the growing fan base. Both came to fruition in the next film but Freddy’s Revenge continues to be held up as the red-headed stepchild of the series. It wasn’t a completely wasted effort, but the final product is plagued with problems ranging from the script, the special effects and just the overall execution. Regardless, most feel that it’s still worthy enough to be a continuation in the string of pearls, even if it doesn’t shine quite like what came before or after it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When Robert Shaye and company decided to venture into doing a third Nightmare sequel, they decided to go back to the man who created it. Wes Craven, along with screenwriter Bruce Wagner, were brought asked to write a treatment for a third film with the possibility of Craven directing. The script that was eventually delivered was one of the more controversial approaches in the history of the series, but it had enough interesting ideas worth pursuing. Deciding that the treatment could use some fresh blood, the studio hired the writing team of Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont to come in and give it a spit and polish, while Russell was hired to direct.

The final shooting script that was handed in had more of a biting satirical edge while still retaining a strange and horrific framework. Ultimately, Dream Warriors was the first entry in the series that pushed Freddy into more comedic territory. They even went so far as to have a scene of a young girl watching TV, and as she watches, Dick Cavett transforms into Freddy and kills Zsa Zsa Gabor. It was actually a strange foreboding for what happened with Freddy in the real world later on. Chuck Russell has admitted on several occasions for being partly responsible for bringing out Freddy’s funny side but never feeling like it was a mistake, despite the detractors.

Dream Warriors was also the first film in the series to give Freddy a deeper backstory. By this point, audiences were well aware that he was the product of vigilante justice, but what was unknown was everything leading up to that. The inclusion of a backstory wherein Freddy was the son of a young nun who had been raped by hundreds of mental patients at an asylum only made him much more interesting and less two dimensional than his low budget counterparts. The film was also the first sequel to have such a rich and diverse cast. The first two films had featured mostly simple, middle class, white teenagers from the suburbs. This time around we’re introduced to a wheelchair-bound geek, a mute, a former heroin addict, and for the first time, a black teenager. The cast was also rich with talented veteran actors like Craig Wasson, as well as new talent like Patricia Arquette, the latter of which went on to have a successful career afterwards. Also returning to reprise their roles from the first film were Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon. Despite the difficulty of working with a first time director in a mostly tense working environment, the cast managed to pull off wonderful performances that tend to stand out more so than other films in the series. The film also contains an array of some very impressive practical and visual effects. There are some fantastic and interesting death sequences along with some very clever special effects on display in this film.

To coincide with its technical prowess was a set of sympathetic victims that we actually cared about. They’re set up early on as troubled teens who are seemingly suicidal and treated as if they’re just crying for attention or losing their marbles altogether by the adults. Setting the story in a psychiatric hospital and following their plight only curries sympathy for them and we hope that they succeed, even if Freddy is the star of the show and we want him to succeed, as well. It all works extremely well, even if some of the sequences do stray into cheesy territory at times. Had the film not given its characters a proper build-up, it could have easily been laughed off of movie screens and made it difficult to pick up the pieces afterwards. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Released on February 27, 1987, Dream Warriors was a huge success, making even more money than first two films. Most fans believe that it’s the best sequel of the series, and I would have to agree with that. It contains everything you could want in a sequel without going overboard with poor story mechanics, thinly-drawn characters or heaping buckets of gore. The film turned Freddy Krueger into a household name, and in the interim, the merchandise to go along with it. The revenues that kept coming in helped in building New Line Cinema into a full-fledged movie studio. However, the success was only minor compared to what came next.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

After the overwhelming success of Dream Warriors, New Line quickly got another sequel underway to capitalize on it. A script was quickly thrown together and Robert Shaye hesitantly hired director Renny Harlin to helm the project. Harlin managed to bring a fresher stylistic approach than previous directors that was fast, frenetic and dripping with teenage angst. It was a perfect fit, despite Shaye’s reluctance and being unsure of the young director at the time.

The Dream Master storyline brought back the three surviving dream warriors from the third film, only to be killed off within the first thirty minutes (a sort of detriment to that film really). The story also further developed the idea of Freddy needing the souls of his victims in order to thrive, except in this instance, the ‘powers’ of his victims were taken in by shy and uninteresting Alice (played wonderfully by Lisa Wilcox). By the end of the film, Alice becomes a courageous and strong young woman, giving her character a real arc (a story device that hadn’t been used in the series up to this point). There were also some very bizarre ideas utilized for the film, including the resurrection of Freddy by way of a dog urinating fire onto his resting place.

The film also combined the talents of many of the best special makeup and technical effects wizards including Jim Doyle, John Carl Buechler, Screaming Mad George, Howard Berger and Kevin Yagher, some of whom had worked on the previous films. Old school mechanical and special effects were in their prime, and whether they were being done in-camera or optically, they worked fantastically on audiences.

The only problem during the shoot was Robert Shaye’s reservations about Renny Harlin. By this point, New Line was beginning to get very protective of their biggest money maker and weren’t easily swayed when it came to new approaches and fresh ideas. Renny Harlin has stated that he was sure that he would have been fired from the project at any time because he didn’t feel that Robert Shaye had the utmost confidence in his ability to deliver a quality film that the company could sell. It didn’t really matter all that much though because Freddy’s popularity was bigger than ever, and even a bad film in the series would have made its money back no matter what. Thankfully, Harlin wasn’t relying on that and attempted to make something the Nightmare fans would embrace.

Given a summer release on August 19, 1988, The Dream Master was an enormous success. Not only that, but it was the biggest money maker of the original series and validated Renny Harlin as a talented and valuable young director to many, including Shaye. Fans came out in droves to see Freddy’s latest and were cheering him on at every turn. The character became so mainstream that it was impossible to take him seriously anymore as a dark character, something that would hurt the franchise in future entries. The Dream Master was also the first of the series to be released during New Line Cinema’s heyday as a major independent studio before becoming a major Hollywood force. Complete with their new (and now famous) logo, it was more than clear that the studio was here to stay. The success gave Renny Harlin a chance to go on and make a string of financially successful action and suspense films while giving the studio an opportunity to seek out new franchises, but the success would prove to be bittersweet for the Nightmare series.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

After its success, The Dream Master had the fastest turnover as far as developing a follow-up sequel in the history of the franchise. The studio was so eager to release another film they knew would make a profit that the creative process was quickly lost in the mix. An unfinished draft of a screenplay, which was written by a variety of different writers, was rushed into development and the directing reins were handed over to a young visual director named Stephen Hopkins.

This time around, the franchise saw a more direct sequel to the characters from the previous film than before. Alice, Alice’s father and Dan from The Dream Master returned to reprise their roles, making Alice the only female character to survive more than one film (obviously discounting Nancy/Heather in New Nightmare, which was more of a hybrid character). Working hard to deliver a visually interesting film (perhaps the most interesting of the series), Stephen Hopkins’ background as an art director gave him more of an artistic visual edge than previous directors. Unfortunately, the story itself was both rushed and sacrificed just to get another film into theatres.

Once again the writers delved into Freddy’s backstory by bringing his mother into the forefront of the story and resurrecting Freddy through her. The convoluted story involved Freddy using Alice’s unborn child to continue invading teenager’s dreams, something which Alice put a stop to in the previous film. It was a more mature approach that dealt with issues of child abandonment, rape and abortion, which hadn’t been dealt with in the series before. In retrospect, it tends to stick out as one of the most socially-conscious entries in the franchise, but it seemed more like a David Lynch nightmare than your usual run-of-the-mill Nightmare film. However, the studio was willing to go with a fresh approach in fear of the series becoming stale.

Like the last film, The Dream Child also brought a lot of talented special effects wizards in to work on it. Freddy’s literal rebirth in the film gave the makeup artists a chance to redesign his make-up. Unfortunately, it’s the weakest and least-effective makeup job in the series, but thankfully the rest of the film’s effects are superior and highly-imaginative. Everything from rear screen projection, stop-motion animation to faux black and white photography was used to great effect. Though visually interesting, the physical effects tended to stray more into gory territory, even more so than previous entries. This caused the MPAA to come down hard on the original cut of the movie, with two key scenes becoming truncated in the final version. It didn’t help the film in the long run and left some audience members scratching their heads as to what exactly was going on during some of the dream sequences.

Released on August 11, 1989, The Dream Child saw a disappointing decline at the box office upon its release. It was technically a financial success, but it was nowhere near the hit that The Dream Master had been and wasn’t an enormous profit for the studio. It saw the poorest performance of any of the films in the series at the time and was a let-down for many of its followers. Fortunately, its aftermarket life proved to be more lucrative. When originally released on home video, the unrated version of The Dream Child was included which featured all of the graphic footage that the MPAA had made the filmmakers cut out to get an R rating reinstated. As of this writing, that footage has yet to be included in future DVD releases.

Meanwhile, New Line Cinema was busy pursuing different avenues to find worthy new film properties, including chasing the rights to the Friday the 13th series from Paramount Pictures. Between the studio’s involvement with other promising directions and The Dream Child’s lackluster box office performance, it was decided to end the series with one final entry.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare

Two years would go by before Freddy would make a return to the big screen. Story treatments for the sixth sequel were being handed in by the likes of people like Peter Jackson, but it was the screenplay by Michael De Luca and Rachel Talalay that got the studio excited the most. Signing on to direct, Rachel had been a very small part of the series from the very beginning, starting out as little more than a production accountant. Having worked her way up the ranks to the director’s chair, she was determined to send the series out on a high note.

The approach to The Final Nightmare was to make it a less serious film and more of a fun, bizarre ride. Twin Peaks had the heaviest influence on the film, as did the work of John Waters. Featuring cameos from the likes of Roseanne Barr, Tom Arnold and Alice Cooper, it was a chance to have some fun with the story after the previous film’s dark, gothic overtones. Hoping to hook audiences with a gimmick after the disappointing box office figures from The Dream Child, it was also decided that the final portion of the film would be filmed in 3D. Although it worked for the most part, story and effects elements were downplayed in order to achieve it, which is a mistake Rachel has often commented on.

The Final Nightmare was also the least direct sequel of the franchise. Taking place sometime in the future when Springwood has been wiped clean of anyone under 20, it featured absolutely none of the characters from the previous films, except for Freddy himself. In the final installment, Freddy has run out of teenagers in Springwood and is looking to jump ship. The only way he can do that is through his daughter. He sends the character of John, the last remaining teenager from Springwood with a bad case of amnesia, out into the world to find her. Unfortunately, Rachel’s quirky style displeased a lot of the fan base while Freddy’s demise seemed to walk down familiar territory, making it more of a joke than enthralling to most fans.

The Final Nightmare also featured a lot of new young talent like Breckin Meyer and Ricky Dean Logan, the latter of whom went on to be a successful character actor. There was also a bit of gravitas given to the film in the lead roles with Lisa Zane and veteran Yaphet Kotto. The film was also one of the few entries in the series that had the most additional footage hit the cutting room floor. Bootlegs of this footage have been floating around for years but none of it has yet to make any official releases. With a wealth of great talent both behind and in front of the camera, it was also one of the easiest and most trouble-free shoots of the series. The biggest headaches stemmed from the filmmakers trying to get the 3D to work properly, but they would soon find out if it would pay off or not.

Released on September 13, 1991, The Final Nightmare was released to slightly more enthusiastic response than its predecessor. Fans happily turned up for Freddy’s supposed final bow, but it wasn’t without its drawbacks. Still lacking the kind of box office draw that New Line was hoping for, the series truly died with this film. It was very much a ‘Twin Peaks meets Looney Tunes’ sort of horror film and fans were generally displeased with the results, citing it as one of, if not THE, worst of the series. To add insult to injury, when it was originally released on home video, the 3D portion was removed due to the limitations of the format. What was leftover were actors sticking objects awkwardly at the camera lens trying to make the 3D work. Although it was released on Laserdisc, the original version of the film wasn’t seen by most home-viewing audiences until almost eight years later when it was released on DVD in New Line’s Nightmare series boxed set (with 3D glasses thrown in for good measure).

It’s almost sad to think that the series really ended the way it did, without its creator coming back for one last stab (pun intended) at bringing Freddy Krueger back to his roots. It might have been a lost cause due to the character’s popularity and how overexposed he had become, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the original storyline would never see another entry... but it wasn’t the last time that we would be seeing Freddy.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

Three years after Freddy’s final curtain call, New Line felt comfortable enough in bringing back the character for one more film. Most people scoffed at the idea and made a joke out of it because of how much the studio went out of their way to declare the series finished. However, the studio treated the idea with respect and wasn’t interested in making just another sequel. The strained relationship between Robert Shaye (now a major studio executive) and the series’ creator Wes Craven was finally ended in one fateful meeting. Shaye was happy to work with Craven in developing a new story for the series and gave him carte blanche to create something that he could call his own, which excited Craven enough to write and direct the project.

After reviewing the entire series from beginning to end, Craven decided to abandon the series’ storyline completely and jump outside of the films altogether, exploring the effects of it on the people who were a part of the original film. The idea was that Freddy, as portrayed in the film, would be the evil that has escaped into the real world and that Craven’s mission within the film is to write another sequel to keep the evil out of reality. Meanwhile, Heather Langenkamp is being terrorized by this evil and her mission is to save herself and her son. It was a very bold move to go in such a radical new direction, but Craven was determined to make a horror film that carried a more meaningful message. That message, which would be explored further in the Scream series much later, was aimed directly at the critics who blamed horror films for all of the negativity taking place in the real world. Nearly all of the actors from the original film would also be brought back for both leads and cameos, but to more or less portray themselves.

New Nightmare was also the first of the franchise to make a more apparent use of computer generated special effects with the practical effects taking a back seat. It was sort of a detriment in a way, but thankfully those effects were not gratuitous and had a purpose in the storytelling. The biggest miscalculation, however, was Freddy’s new look. To give the character a new identity as a pure agent of evil, his design was redeveloped to look bulkier and even more sinister than before. This included having blades that came out of all four fingers plus his thumb instead of using his trademarked razor glove, as well as transforming into a demon at one point. It’s a flaw that Wes Craven admits wasn’t the best idea, but it served its purpose to make Freddy unique instead of a carbon copy of what we had seen before.

Released on November 9, 1994, ten years after the original film, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare turned out to be the very first film in the franchise to be received well critically. Unfortunately, the box office figures weren’t on the same page. Returning its budget but failing to capture the kind of popularity the previous films had seen, New Nightmare became the least successful film of the entire franchise. Some fans felt that it was demeaning to Freddy’s character to take him out of the original series and make him symbolic. Others felt that the story just wasn’t interesting enough to explore in the first place. Despite this, the film has had a strong aftermarket life on home video and is considered by many to be an extremely smart and effective horror film on its own.

The Nightmare series then went into a slumber and lay dormant for well over a decade as New Line Cinema moved on to other promising properties. They were, by this point, a major Hollywood studio with other hugely successful films and franchises under their belt including Blade, Se7en, Rush Hour, Austin Powers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Mask, Friday, and of course, the biggest success the studio has ever had, The Lord of the Rings franchise. As for Craven, he moved on from Freddy and found mainstream success with the extremely successful Scream franchise through Miramax, but continues to acknowledge A Nightmare on Elm Street as his greatest triumph.

Freddy vs. Jason

In 1992, New Line Cinema had acquired the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise after Paramount Pictures had allowed their sequel rights to lapse, giving steam to a project that was trapped in development hell for nearly two decades. Finally coming to fruition almost nine years after the Nightmare series had ended (and almost ten years after the Friday the 13th series had also ended), Freddy vs. Jason was the long-awaited match-up that fans had been keeping tabs on since the project went into development in 1987.

The original script for Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood was originally meant to be the penultimate clash between the two titans, but when New Line and Paramount couldn’t work out an agreement over the distribution and character rights, the script was re-written and turned into the familiar Friday sequel that we all know. A myriad of different writers and scripts passed through the studio’s hands until a screenplay worth putting into production could be found. In 2002, that finally came to pass and New Line green-lit the project with Bride of Chucky director Ronny Yu at the director’s helm.

The good news was that Robert Englund would be returning to portray Freddy, but the bad news was that Ken Kirzinger would be brought in to replace Kane Hodder as Jason. Kirzinger had doubled for Hodder in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan, and according to the filmmakers, he was cast because he was much taller than Englund and more befitting of the director’s concept of the character. The decision to recast Jason caused an enormous amount of controversy in the fan community with most deriding the film before it even went into production. Kane Hodder himself was also upset by the decision, having been a cheerleader for the project for many years, but the controversy soon died down to just merely murmurings of disapproval. With their two leads in place, filming soon began.

According to the developers and writers on the project, it was important that the story never found itself trying to reinvent either character’s backstories. It could have been a bitter blow to either fan base if there was a deeper meaning to the duel at hand. An early concept placed Freddy as a camp counselor at Camp Crystal Lake in 1958 whereupon he both molested and drowned Jason. The concept was that Jason had returned from his watery grave searching for the counselor who did him in. Fascinating to think about, but ultimately, would likely have weakened the material rather than strengthen it. In the script that was eventually used, the adults of Springwood decide that the only way to defeat Freddy is to erase him from ever existing, and without the fear that he feeds on, Freddy can’t return to the dreams of teenagers. Fortunately, Freddy finds a way around that. His plan to bring Jason Voorhees back from the dead and go to Springwood to spread the fear for him backfires when Jason won’t stop killing Freddy’s children, leading to the eventual clash between them.

Released on August 15, 2003, Freddy vs. Jason was the biggest money maker of either franchise by a mile; drawing in nearly $83 million domestically and almost $115 million worldwide. Reactions from both fans and critics were mixed, but New Line had successfully achieved what they had set out to do with the film and reaped the rewards. What the film managed to deliver was a blood-soaked, ultra-violent and just flat out hard R-rated horror film. During the days that major studios wanted a PG-13 rating on most of their summer releases to get a bigger majority of moviegoers in to see them, it was a blessing that it didn’t happen with Freddy vs. Jason. The latter half of the film is a hack and slash the likes of which hadn’t been seen in a mainstream horror film for some time. With bloody debris, bone and appendages flying in every direction, it was exactly what many fans had been waiting patiently to see.

A sequel involving either Ash from The Evil Dead series or Pinhead from the Hellraiser series was discussed soon after, but never came to fruition. It could have been the start of another of the classic monster mash-ups from the 1930’s and 1940’s for a new generation of horror fans, but maybe sometimes it’s just best to wonder what if. Although, I have to say that I would much rather have seen that come to pass rather than what happened next.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Now here’s where it gets really personal for me.

In the age of the almighty remake, A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t invulnerable to the Hollywood reprinting process that continues to tarnish the legacy of many a film. Ever since the announcement that a remake was in the works, fans moaned and groaned about it, and for good reason. How could anybody possibly re-capture not just the magic of the original, but cast an entirely new actor in the role that Robert Englund was born to play? Well, whether fans liked it or not, it happened. The production company Platinum Dunes and music video director Samuel Bayer set out to re-imagine one of horror’s greatest icons and failed on so many levels.

For starters, the cast of the Nightmare remake is miles apart from that of the original cast. Actors from the original film fit into their characters so well because they were more or less playing themselves, which helped make them more easily accessible to audiences. This time around, no one in any of their roles comes across that way. In fact, they’re so uninteresting that you generally don’t give two hoots about them. They’re, for the part, just the usual pretty faces that are slapped into mainstream horror movies instead of interesting characters that an audience might care about. Some might argue that waiting to see the characters get it in these films is what the whole ballgame is about, but I would disagree. If there’s one thing that the Nightmare series accomplished, even in the worst of sequels, it was to sympathize with its victims. If an audience is manipulated into relating to the characters on even the most basic of levels then they would also in turn feel sorry for them. That’s the way that the Nightmare series has always worked and why its appeal is much more broad than your usual slasher movie. If audiences want to see people they don’t care about getting hacked to pieces, they can watch the Friday the 13th series where that kind of thing is commonplace and acceptable.

The other great thing about the original series is that it maintains plenty of repeatability, but there’s absolutely nothing so spectacular about the remake that makes you want to see it more than once. Formulaic to the core, it’s just another entry into the “everyone’s dying, it’s a big mystery and we have to solve it” modern schlock fest that continues to be recycled over and over again in a plethora of others like it. There’s also nothing original and innovative about it. It’s just so average, bland and uninteresting that it makes you want to see the original films again just to get the bad taste out of your mouth (which is about the most positive thing I can say about it). It gathers together many of the moments and visual cues from the original films into a sort of greatest hits package without bringing anything new to the table. Of course, each sequel in the original series wasn’t particularly innovative, but they were crafted with much more thought and care than just Xeroxing ideas and concepts.

The biggest flaws in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street were the changes made from the original story. Not only could the filmmakers not create something fresh, but they also changed and flawed the series two biggest characters: Freddy himself and Nancy. In the new version of Freddy’s backstory, he tends to the gardening of a pre-school, living in the basement and befriending the children who attend there, which we later find out was more than just friendship. The film, for a while at least, plays with the idea that maybe the vigilante parents who went after him were mistaken and that Freddy might have been an innocent man who was back for revenge, only later to find out that they’re wrong. This flaws Freddy as a character and makes his motives questionable. If Freddy is only back for revenge without having previously murdered anyone, that makes him relatable, and you’re not supposed to relate to your antagonist. Sure Freddy is popular as a character and audiences love seeing him do what he does, but never on the level of relating to him. As a character in this film, he’s definitely a bad person and does some atrocious and vile things to the children, but he was never a killer. It may not seem like that big of a deal, and the writers were probably trying to give both the parents of the children and Freddy himself a more precise reason to exact revenge, but Freddy loses his character essence in the process. I’m not saying that pedophilia and molestation aren’t evil things because they are, but in a character sense, Freddy’s motives are flawed. In other words, Freddy was a more complete character in the original series with enough character motivation that extended beyond what he did in reality.

And even though Jackie Earl Haley is a fine actor and does the best that he possibly can, even inside a flawed character, no actress could have done anything with the character of Nancy. In this version, she is very loosely based on the original film’s Nancy Thompson, and I do mean loosely. This Nancy, played by the talented Rooney Mara, is a loner, keeps to herself and doesn’t really want much to do with anybody, especially the guy who’s the most interested in her throughout the course of the film. In other words, this is the “emo” version of Nancy. The problem with this is that not only does it also destroy the essence of the original character, it gives Freddy no opposition. You have a bunch of psychologically scarred teenagers running around without any inner strength to conquer their demons, and therefore, aren’t believable enough to go up against such a powerful force. To put it in perspective a bit, Nancy has always been Freddy’s greatest foe. She’s a strong young woman who doesn’t overly depend on others to help her in her time of need. Her bravery and strength is one of the reasons that the original Nightmare worked as a story. If she had been like Barbara from Night of the Living Dead, a weak, screaming and horribly useless character, she would have been dead in no time. Nancy also crossed likeability boundaries between sexes and not only did the guys want her, but the gals wanted to be her. So now, in the remake, we’re given this emotionally-crippled young woman who can’t really do anything on her own without the help of her pseudo-boyfriend (who, by the way, is merely there only to spew juxtaposition most of the time). The filmmakers have, more or less, diluted Nancy’s character and made her just another member of the cattle in the herd of the modern horror film industry. But, in spite of all of the flaws, the remake steam-rolled on ahead without any objections from anyone about its flawed content.

Released on April 30, 2010, A Nightmare on Elm Street definitely pulled in a very good revenue for the studio due to name recognition alone, but was met with mostly negative critical and die-hard fan response. As for myself, I left the theater on opening day feeling underwhelmed an unimpressed. I really tried my best to set my bias aside and judge the film of its own merit, but when it takes so many elements from the original films without trying to do anything new, it’s really difficult to do that. Ultimately, if you’re remaking a film, your final product is going to be judged against the original no matter what. There’s just no getting around that, and the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street pales in comparison to the quality of the original film.

As of this writing, the franchise ends here. There are talks of another sequel in the works, which I hope doesn’t come to fruition, but if it does, I would hope that a little more care would be taken in the writing and execution processes to make it something interesting.

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

Despite its popularity and fan base enthusiasm, a documentary chronicling the entire Nightmare series had never been produced. In the wake of lavishly-produced DVD boxed sets like Blade Runner and Alien Anthology, which were crammed to the brim with extra content, A Nightmare on Elm Street was never given the level of treatment that it deserved. But in 2010, a small production company of filmmakers and fans put together a massive documentary on the entire history of the Nightmare series entitled Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.

Clocking in at around four hours, this documentary devotes nearly half an hour to each film in the series plus the short-lived A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series - Freddy’s Nightmares TV show. It’s an absolute treasure trove of never-before-seen material interspersed with interviews that include almost every major actor or crew member involved with each film. It’s actually the first time that a good 50% of these people have spoken on camera in years (or possibly ever) about the series. Some of the more successful actors weren’t available to take part in it, such as Johnny Depp and Patricia Arquette, but the sheer wealth of participants outshines these minor losses. It also features wrap-around stop motion segments and original music for the opening titles by Charles Bernstein. Included in the documentary is a collection of rare material including deleted & behind-the-scenes footage, storyboards, personal photos, and even props & memorabilia. The filmmakers also provide an audio commentary for those interested in the making of the documentary itself.

This 2 disc set also comes with a bonus disc absolutely stuffed with extra material that didn’t make it onto the first disc. Extended Interviews contains even MORE material that couldn’t be shoe-horned into the main feature (even devoting a couple of minutes to talk about the Nightmare remake); First Look: Heather Langenkamp’s I Am Nancy is a brief look at the documentary exploring the franchise as it relates to her; For the Love of the Glove takes a look at Freddy’s right-handed trademark, and the fans that have devoted their time, money and energy into creating their own gloves; Fred Heads: The Ultimate Freddy Fans focuses on the fandom of the series; Horror’s Hallowed Grounds: Return to Elm Street is a featurette from the infamous web series that revisits the locations seen in the original film; Freddy vs. The Angry Video Game Nerd takes a look at the YouTube superstar and the video game of A Nightmare on Elm Street; Expanding the Elm Street Universe: Freddy in Comic Books & Novels delves into the fan fiction and media created by various contributors; The Music of the Nightmare: Conversations with Composers & Songwriters sheds some light on the series’ musical scores and original songs with most of the people involved in creating them; Elm Street’s Poster Boy: The Art of Matthew Joseph Peak is a look at the man who did the poster artwork for most of the original films; A Nightmare on Elm Street in 10 Minutes is a humorous take on the original movie; and finally, following it all up is the Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy teaser trailer. There’s also a very funny Easter Egg featuring Charles Fleischer, who appeared in the first film. Obviously the main feature is the reason to get this, but this is a wonderful set of supplements to append it.

Released on October 5, 2010, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy was an instant hit with fans. It also received rave reviews and won various awards the year of its release. As a sort of compendium to the series, it was also an entertaining story told through the eyes of the people who worked on it and guided its journey. It also spawned a slew of horror retrospectives and documentaries that continues to this day. If you’re a horror fan at all, it truly is the holy grail of documentaries. It’s so wonderfully paced and entertaining that the four hour running time is never an issue and just flies right by with little notice. It’s a labor of love that honors both the series itself and the studio that produced it. It’s also bittersweet as you realize that the series is over and will never be as prominent as it once was. Seeing Robert Shaye thank the fans with heart-felt gratitude for their support with the look of sadness in his face says it all, and it’s a wonderful way to close out not just the documentary, but the Nightmare legacy itself.

It was just a dream...

One has to wonder just where the Nightmare franchise could possibly go from here, if anywhere? I’m almost certain that we haven’t seen the last of Freddy Krueger, whether he’s being portrayed by Robert Englund or not. Regardless, I’ll continue to be an avid fan of the series but I’d also like to see it get its due on both DVD and Blu-ray, the deluxe way (its lackluster Blu-ray debut doesn’t count). For a series that built a movie studio up from nothing and launched the careers of many successful actors, directors, makeup artists, special effects technicians and producers, I believe it has a place in history and deserves only the best of treatment, and I hope that I’m still around to see that happen.

In any case, it’s been both a pleasure and a privilege to discuss the Nightmare series with all of you and I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little trip down memory lane as much as I have. I’d also like to thank my cohorts here at The Digital Bits for their constant support and friendship.

You have to give it to European filmmakers. They might not have always made effective horror films, but they usually always tried to inject some style or subtlety into them. I’m not saying that they weren’t capable filmmakers. They were, but they just didn’t always quite hit the mark when it came to something that would scare or disgust an audience. Some managed to pull it off, but others fell by the wayside. Filmmakers like Jean Rollin and Jess Franco were two of those hit or miss type filmmakers. Both men were more interested in pushing sexuality in their films while the framework wasn’t given as much attention. It all goes hand in hand with where you come from and what your passion is as a filmmaker.

Ever since Night of the Living Dead tore the doors open on what was acceptable in a horror film, every filmmaker inspired by it seemed to try and do something like it, or push it even further. It had a domino effect that is still being felt today with films like Hostel, The Loved Ones and Martyrs taking shock and disgust to a whole new level. But the problem with today’s horror films is that there isn’t much distinct or different about them. Nothing truly original comes along very often. Everything’s floating around in a sea of constant remakes, parodies, homages, knock-offs and reimaginings, the likes of which has never been as prevalent in the history of cinema until now. There’s also something else going on though. Originality itself is becoming a scarce thing. All of the good ideas have been executed already. It can especially frustrating, especially for a screenwriter trying to come up something to new, to learn that what you thought was a really great idea has already been done.

What it boils down to nowadays, at least from a marketing point of view, is recognition of a brand name or a product, like the recent Evil Dead remake, for instance. Even though the filmmakers of the original were heavily involved with the film in every stage of the process and it relied heavily on old-fashioned special effects techniques, it still manages to come off as product by the simple fact of its existence. The gore in the film was used as a way to disgust and frighten audiences, which seemed to be moderately successful, but ultimately didn’t make much of an impact and people walked out of the theater ready for the next thing. Don’t get me wrong though. I’ll take something like this over more Paranormal Activity sequels any day of the week. The point is that all that’s left to be memorable in a horror film is to be completely, balls-out gory and disgusting, not unlike Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust from 1980.

I come from a generation of horror fans that grew up on heaping amounts of gore. Not just from the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s, but from the early 90’s, as well. The difference is that gore in those films was almost always tongue-in-cheek, and rather tame. In those days the MPAA would slap you with an X rating if you were too violent or gory, especially if you mixed sex with violence. Hell, even the original Dawn of the Dead was released unrated to avoid an X rating. As a consequence, many horror films during the 80’s were cut to pieces in order to get an R rating and make the film more marketable. Fast forward to now and you see how much the times have changed. A film like the new Evil Dead, gratuitously violent and gory for the biggest portion of its running time AND without the tongue-in-cheek behind it, receives an R rating today. Personally, I see it as one of the biggest hypocrisies in the film industry. I’m sure it’s especially frustrating for somebody like John Buechler or Steve Miner, whose entries in the Friday the 13th franchise were notoriously gutted by the MPAA.

So while violence reigns supreme in today’s horror market, sexuality gas been left in the dust because most Americans, like it or not, are afraid of nudity and sexuality in the media instead of hardcore violence and gore. Places in the world like the European market, however, are almost completely backwards in this regard. In the United Kingdom, they won’t even allow scenes of nunchucks to be seen on-screen. In places like France and Italy, human sexuality is much more important and accepted. So it comes as no surprise that a film like Zombie Lake is, tonally, much more about intimacy, sexuality and people, rather than horror.

But let’s not split hairs here. For me it’s all about context. You can mix and match different elements into a horror film and find a nice balance, depending on the tone that you’re going after or what your initial idea was in the first place. It’s not just all about the carnage every single time. Sometimes it’s about the characters too, and how you can relate to them. It could also be about subtleties or overall themes and the horror is just a framework to get an idea across. European filmmakers were all over the place with this stuff, especially in Italy. Filmmakers like Dario Argento were the minority, in that they pushed the violence in their movies moreso than the sexuality. The thing is though that they weren’t above doing conventional films either, like Oasis of the Zombies, which is more of a straight-forward zombie tale than usual for the region.

On the other end of the continent, specifically in the UK, the approach was much more lavish and production-savvy, by comparison. Hammer Productions, for example, were taking all of the classic tales like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, and putting a robust and colorful new spin on them. It gave actors like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee careers in the industry, most of whom are now synonymous with Hammer Productions (especially Cushing). But, like their neighbors, Hammer was also into pushing the boundaries of sexuality in the films they were doing, especially with films like The Vampire Lovers.

It’s a shame that this type of filmmaking doesn’t really occur much anymore. Most horror films today are merely remakes that are basically Xeroxing what’s come before. Take that trailer for the new Carrie remake for instance. The trailer attempts to sell to you a movie that’s a carbon copy of the original, almost by design. It seems to be, beat for beat, every scene from the original film remade and shoved into a trailer to get you excited about seeing it, but here’s something that most people don’t think about when that happens: you know what the film is about already before seeing it.

I’m sure not everyone that’s reading this has actually seen Carrie, or read the book that it was based on. But, we all know what the story is and what it’s about. The scenes involving Carrie’s first period in the shower and being ridiculed for it, Carrie’s obsessive religious mother constantly scolding and abusing her, and of course, the famous prom scene where Carrie has pig’s blood dumped onto her and everything goes to hell. All of that is in the remake, and more importantly, it’s in the trailer, so that when you see it, you recognize all of those things. They don’t bother to try and build up intrigue about the story or how scary the movie is going to be. Nope. They just show you the scenes that you recognize because you’ve either seen them before or you know about them already because the story, in many ways, is embedded into popular culture. You think you’re seeing a new movie, but you’re not. You’re seeing a new version of the same story with the same characters and the same outcome. It usually works on people too, most of the time. More’s the pity, too. People spend their hard-earned money (upwards of $50 to $100, depending on how many people tag along) to see something that they could stayed home and watched instead. And, in 99.9% of all cases, the original is superior, so why buy an inferior product? But, people are naive enough to fall for it, and I feel very sorry for them for wasting their time and money.

But, if that’s all that’s available, what’s the alternative? If you can’t see anything original or different as a theatrical experience, then what do you go see on a Friday night? It’s a dilemma for some people who see through the marketing scheme. Fortunately places like the New Beverly in Los Angeles and the Alamo Drafthouse are constantly celebrating older movies, including horror, and showing them on the big screen. Unfortunately, these locations are not nationwide. Someday they very well could be, but for now, the options are limited. I would personally suggest just staying home and saving your money instead of seeing something you already know, but at the end of the day, it’s still a matter of preference and opinion.

The ultimate point of all of this though is that there’s currently no strong output of risky or original horror movies in the market. There aren’t really any studios putting out anything of real quality or making any risky movies anymore, just safe bets. Sure the occasional risk-taker will pop up now and again, but not often, and when it does, it usually goes unappreciated anyway, which makes studios even more hesitant to greenlight original ideas. I can’t say how much that the European filmmakers in their heyday cared about how many people actually saw their work. I’m sure many of them were concerned in some way, but now that the theatrical market is less about risk and more about money-making schemes, films like Zombie Lake, Oasis of the Zombies and The Vampire Lovers have become much more important in the grand scheme of things. They get great treatment by distribution companies like Kino Lorber, Redemption, Twilight Time and Scream Factory, despite being in a niche market. I’m happy when little-seen or unknown gems like these crop up and get good treatment on the dual formats, especially horror films. If only we could get the same kind of treatment for a Friday night crowd, then we’d really have something, wouldn’t we? It’s food for thought.

Welcome to Dailies, a column dedicated to bringing you both the obscure and the mainstream on DVD and Blu-ray. Being that a lot of us seem to have such a large appetite for varying film genres, this column will cover virtually everything I can get my grubby little paws on. Some of it will be good, and some of it not so much, but hopefully it will illuminate a few titles that you might not have seen otherwise, or perhaps just needed a reminder about. Either way, enjoy!

Today I’m going to be covering the release of the Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection on Blu-ray from the good folks over at Lionsgate. But first, let’s discuss Francis Ford Coppola and his work a little bit...

I think it should go without saying that Francis Ford Coppola is one of the finest filmmakers from the New Hollywood era that we have left today. He may not be as passionate about it as he once was, but as with all artists, they mellow with age. His current film output is sparse but a little more interesting and with more integrity than most of his contemporaries: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma, to name a few. In my opinion, a lot of those filmmakers, who gave us some of the best and most entertaining movies in the history of the industry, are still out to capture their former glories and stay on top of the game by either trying to outdo other filmmakers or improve the technology so much that their films become an afterthought in the process. It just seems to be Francis Ford Coppola’s way of going about it to not be in competition with himself or anyone else. He just wants to make films, and he does. What we as the audience get out of it are some interesting and beautiful films. They may not be box office hits and opinions will vary on their entertainment value, but he does them on his own terms. He tells stories that he wants to tell, seemingly without any fear of losing money or positive critique in the process. I may have this all wrong, but judging from what he does nowadays (and especially the financial troubles he went through to make films in the past), it certainly feels that way to me.

His first big success came in 1972 with The Godfather, which was, of course, heralded as the greatest film ever made at the time. He topped himself two years later with The Godfather Part II and The Conversation, both released the same year (the former of which is still seen as one of the greatest sequels to a film ever made). He then set out to make one of the most complicated and expensive films ever made, Apocalypse Now. After the success of that film is when he really began a downhill journey from an artist to a director for hire and back to being an artist again. It all started with One From the Heart, which is one of the biggest box office flops to ever come along. Consequently, he spent the profits he earned from his next several films (including The Godfather Part III) to pay back what he owed for that film. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released that he seemed to be blossoming into his own as an artist again. Around this time he also began doing other things and trying new business ventures, like building and maintaining his own winery. Today, he only occasionally has the urge to make a film, and when he does, he tackles projects with gentler and more world-weary eyes and hands. I suppose it could be his way of having self-expression as something to fall back on. In any case, he’s seemingly out to please only himself.

As far as what my favorite Coppola film is, it’s an enormously difficult question to answer. There was a time when I probably would have immediately said Apocalypse Now, or even The Conversation. Even The Godfather and The Godfather Part II come to mind. The truth is that I adore everything that he does, and like a group of children, choosing one that is heads and tails above the other one just doesn’t seem fair. There are lots of gems in the Coppola library to choose from as well, and not just the big tentpole titles. Let’s not forget Peggy Sue Got Married, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish or his contribution to New York Stories. You also can’t leave out his more recent films Youth Without You and Tetro. Let’s also not forget about Patton, which he co-wrote but didn’t direct. Needless to say, the man’s output of material is quite illustrious, and each film is special in one way or another, be it for the cinematography, performances, story, etc. Distilling all of that work down into one film and declaring it his magnum opus feels out of place to me. Instead, let’s take a closer look at the five films in the Francis Ford Coppola: 5-Film Collection set for a bit of further analysis.

The Conversation

Coppola’s answer to the paranoiac political thriller The Conversation is about as different from anything that he’s ever made. It actually seems more like a Brian De Palma film, at least on the surface. I’m sure that Coppola didn’t have a particular type of film in mind at the time, but that’s what it ended up being anyways. It’s also a film he wasn’t heavily involved in writing, but he’s so hands on with every facet of the production, including the acting and the dialogue, that it’s very much his film. Gene Hackman’s performance also deserves mention because it’s quite fantastic, showing a side of himself that we rarely see, which is a vulnerable human being. He’s so paranoid by everyone around him that the only way he can talk about himself personally is in his dreams, and when he does relent in the real world, he’s ridiculed slightly for it. The piano score from David Shire is also great, a score which was a kind of rarity in those days (still is). The film is expertly paced to draw you in, taking a bit of inspiration from Blow-Up, but it’s also one of the edgiest and darkest films in the thriller genre. Technically it’s not quite a thriller, but that’s about as close to a genre as it gets. As I stated previously, it was released the same year as The Godfather Part II, both films of which swept up the Oscar nominations that year. I can’t imagine any other filmmaker being in that kind of position and still managing to come out on top.

Apocalypse Now

If I had a gun to my head and somebody forced me to pick a pearl from the necklace, then it would probably be Apocalypse Now. There’s just something about the film that I find both incredibly intriguing and endlessly fascinating. It always keeps me coming back for more with its purely in-your-face attitude, as well as magnificent performances, score and visuals. The stories of the making of the film are also just as interesting as the film itself, which probably plays a lot into the mysticism of the piece as a whole. The sheer madness of the behind the scenes craziness made its way onto the frames of the film itself, going hand in hand with its subject matter. Yet to me, both are one and the same, and I find it difficult to separate that knowledge of the making of the film while watching it. I think it’s also because it’s one of the greatest imperfect films ever made. An assembled five and a half hour movie whittled down to two and a half hours was no easy task, especially when the film winds up being something entirely different from what it was originally intended to be in the first place.

Apocalypse Now Redux

There’s also the alternate version of the film simply titled Apocalypse Now Redux. In all fairness, this isn’t my favorite version of the film, for a variety of reasons (I’m among the majority on this one for once). Mostly because the film was fine the way it was. The new footage introduced into the body of the film seems to weaken the narrative rather than strengthen it. I don’t mind that this version exists, as long as the original is left intact, and that’s the case here. To me, the film is about what it ended up being originally: going into the heart of darkness and destroying the evil, not stopping off to have a 20 minute discussion with a French plantation owner, but that’s one fellow’s opinion.

One From the Heart

Coppola’s greatest box office failure, One From the Heart, is anything but a failure when it comes to the value of the work put into it. Shot entirely at Zoetrope Studios, the film is extraordinary to look at. It’s obvious right away that all 26 million dollars is there on the screen for all to see. Sure the film has pacing issues, but everyone gives marvelous performances, the sets are spectacular, the costumes are wonderful, the cinematography and lighting are exquisite and, as always, the direction is strong. It’s in the writing where the movie fails really. It isn’t that it’s bad, it’s just that a story of this type isn’t really for everyone. The music and the choreography are marvelous, of course; the former courtesy of Tom Waits, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work. The film is quite bluesy in nature, and probably not one that you’ll want to watch too many times, but that’s not a negative response from me. One thing’s for sure: Francis Ford Coppola may sometimes fail, but when he does, he fails enormously.

Tetro

Despite how I feel about it, people would definitely consider Coppola’s latter-day output to be mostly underwhelming, but I beg to differ. Stacked up against his great successes of the past, a film like Tetro may seem smaller and unimportant by comparison, but it’s also by design. Partially biographical in nature, Tetro is akin to The Godfather, Part II because of its narrative structure, with things taking place in the past and the present simultaneously. I like that the previous events are in color, when Tetro’s life was different, but it’s also difficult to tell whose point of view the film is actually from. Is it Bennie’s, and is he reliving past events in his mind, or is it the other way around, and Tetro’s life is now dark and monochromatic in nature because of past events? It’s a tough call, but one thing is certain: it’s still a good story, either way. It’s told mostly well, despite the enormously-long running time, which feels longer than it actually is. I found the film to be visually-arresting (unsurprisingly), as well as engaging story-wise. Is it Coppola’s best effort? No. Is it a good, or even great effort? Yes, and that’s good enough for me.

Tetro should also prove my previous point that Coppola is out to make personal projects and not worry winning popularity contests or keeping up with what’s going on technically in the industry (not like he was during the early 1980’s anyway). Again, he’s not out to recapture former glories, only to make films. I think he knows that he’s past his prime, so he instead tackles smaller subjects, and dare I say, more interesting subjects. It’s honest filmmaking, and that seems to be becoming more and more of a rarity these days. He doesn’t have to make these films, he just wants to, and I’m glad that he does. Because of this, I can always count on something of quality from him without second-guessing it.

And with that, let’s take a look at my review of this Blu-ray collection:

Welcome to Dailies, a column dedicated to bringing you both the obscure and the mainstream on DVD and Blu-ray. Being that a lot of us seem to have such a large appetite for varying film genres, this column will cover virtually everything I can get my grubby little paws on. Some of it will be good, and some of it not so much, but hopefully it will illuminate a few titles that you might not have seen otherwise, or perhaps just needed a reminder about. Either way, enjoy!

Today I’m going to be covering the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 & 2: Ultimate Edition on Blu-ray.

I’d like to start this off by saying, with the best intentions, that I’m not the biggest fan of the Harry Potter film series. However, I do appreciate it for the craft and the character development contained within. For more than ten years, and under four different directors, the eight films in the Harry Potter series made billions of dollars worldwide. The books themselves established author J.K. Rowling as one of the most respected and controversial writers of the last twenty years. There have been few film franchises like Harry Potter that have gone as deep with its characters and the worlds they inhabit, while at the same time being magical and fun. In other words, it’s not a film series that was simply thrown together to make a quick buck then move on to the next disposable property. The studio behind it may be more interested in the financial possibilities, sure, but these films do not feel like product. They feel like films, with real soul and passion behind them, with the intention of delivering the best entertainment money can buy.

Unlike something like the Twilight film series, Harry Potter is derived from what are arguably the most popular books since The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and that’s no small feat. I don’t really care for the fact that Harry Potter always seemed to be lumped in with the Twilight series (in pop culture terms, at least). I find it rather insulting, as I’m sure J.K. Rowling does, who spent a great deal of time developing the worlds, exploring the characters, and most important of all, planning and actually thinking about what she was doing. She did more with her work than most authors would do in a lifetime with theirs. Because of this, Harry Potter winds up not being at all simplistic like the Twilight series, which really has no justification for its existence (other than exploiting young women using soap opera-based tactics).

Now I don’t intend to sit here and continually trash Twilight just because I have an open forum to do so. Others have definitely done a better job of it elsewhere, but I think it’s important to understand that they’re separate entities, and have nothing in common with each other outside of the fact that they’re both books that were made into films. It ends there. The appeal of Harry Potter is based on the values of friendship, as well as courage in the face of danger or even your ultimate doom. That’s why it works for me, as it does for millions of fans around the world. Even without that the characters are fantastic, and you really get a sense for who they are and what they want. In those terms, I respect this series immensely without being a fan. I’m more of a vocal supporter than anything, which is good enough for me.

Ok. Now that that’s settled, I’ll step off of my high horse, lower my nose and dig into this review:

Welcome to Dailies, a column dedicated to bringing you both the obscure and the mainstream on DVD and Blu-ray. Being that a lot of us seem to have such a large appetite for varying film genres, this column will cover virtually everything I can get my grubby little paws on. Some of it will be good, and some of it not so much, but hopefully it will illuminate a few titles that you might not have seen otherwise, or perhaps just needed a reminder about. Either way, enjoy!

In this week’s entry, we’re going to be taking a look at a couple of new titles from the folks over at Shout! Factory via their new Scream Factory label: The Island and Death Valley. I gotta tell you, I’m just thrilled to bits with the quality of product that this company is putting out. Their transfers may not be the best that money can buy, nor are all of them overloaded with supplemental features, but they do give new life to mostly unseen sci-fi and horror film titles that a lot of us have either never heard of or have forgotten about. They cover some pretty high profile titles like Halloween II and They Live, but for me the real cream of the crop is the unseen stuff.

Looking at it from this perspective, imagine that it’s the early 2000’s again. DVD has finally gotten underway, and while it hasn’t totally replaced Laserdisc or VHS as a home video standard (at least at this point), it’s certainly gaining steam, and that’s thanks mostly in part to some great titles being made available on the format. As it became more and more popular and enthusiasts like us here at The Bits became more enthralled with it, DVD releases have since become a tug of war with the movie-buying public about which titles they want to go out and purchase. Genre film fans were happy to fork over their cash for unearthed titles like The Church, Turkish Delight or I Spit on Your Grave to companies like Elite Entertainment, Anchor Bay, Blue Underground and VCI. These companies were proud to serve up unseen cinema for the enthusiastic DVD-purchasing audience who became curious about a lot of films merely by the cover art or the extras that were included. They were so successful with it that they inspired major distributors to dig up other forgotten titles for release as well.

Before the economy went into the toilet, there was a huge boom of titles to come along that were given special treatment with boxed sets, special packaging and multiple cover arts (The Evil Dead being the most infamous of them all). After the economy collapsed a bit, we started seeing less and less of these titles as these companies were going in different directions and mainly sticking to releasing the movies that they knew would sell for sure, leaving other unseen gems in the dust. This was also the time when the remake boom happened, and remakes of mostly recognizable titles to audiences were a less risky way to put something into theaters than just simply going with something that they felt audiences might not be interested in.

Not much later, Blu-ray comes along. The economy improves a bit (not by much) and the need for more elaborate releases of unseen films begins again on a new format. Companies like Lionsgate, Anchor Bay, Kino International, Redemption Films and Blue Underground start off strong, but it’s Shout! Factory who comes along and suddenly dominates the game with quality over quantity, and so far, there’s no one else on the market who can even contend with them (at least in my opinion). In these dark days with the talk of physical media becoming obsolete, it’s a more than welcome return to the early days of DVD, and let’s hope that it continues.

And with that, here are Blu-ray reviews for two of Scream Factory’s latest titles:

Since the holidays are here and chances are very good that a lot of us will be gathered around the TV for some entertainment after stuffing ourselves silly, here are some reviews of a couple of high-class (but clean) Blu-ray titles that everyone can enjoy: Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and The Great Dictator.

Welcome to Dailies, a column dedicated to bringing you both the obscure and the mainstream on DVD and Blu-ray. Being that a lot of us seem to have such a large appetite for varying film genres, this column will cover virtually everything I can get my grubby little paws on. Some of it will be good, and some of it not so much, but hopefully it will illuminate a few titles that you might not have seen otherwise, or perhaps just needed a reminder about. Either way, enjoy!

This week, we're going to be talking about a serious problem.

Do you have the post-Halloween blues? Well, if you’re anything like me, you probably do. Just because the best holiday of the year has passed doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy some of our favorite horror movies, does it? For those of us who believe that October is just too short a month, here are a few classics for you to check out that you might have forgotten about.

Night of the Demons

Starting things off, here’s a little gem. If you’re looking for a great Halloween party movie, then Night of the Demons is definitely the ticket for you. It’s a pure 80’s hard rock-driven Halloween flick with all of the gore, sex and nudity that 80’s horror movies had to offer. It also contains your basic formula of a bunch of teenagers getting together in old abandoned house for a party wherein everything goes to hell. This time around, instead of an old house, it’s an old abandoned funeral home, which ups the ante when it comes to the overall creepiness factor. The make-up effects are great and the acting won’t win any awards, but it isn’t meant to be anything more than what it already is, which is just a fun horror movie. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for scream queen Linnea Quigley in one of the major roles.

Tourist Trap

Next up we have Tourist Trap. It’s probably one of the creepiest yet entertaining horror movies that involve dolls and wax figures in its plot. It’s complete lunacy most of the time, but the atmosphere and the visuals will make your skin crawl. It’s hard to put your finger on just what makes wax figures, clowns, dolls and mannequins so creepy, but they’re used to full effect in this creep classic. The story itself is pretty sparse. A group of kids stumble upon a guy who owns a shop full of these disturbing little things, and while at first he seems like nothing more than a weirdo, we know better later after he bumps them all off one by one... in that eerie mask of his. The point is that if you’re looking for something on the bizarre end of the horror movie spectrum, then look no further than Tourist Trap.

Subspecies

Here’s an often-overlooked classic from Charles Band and company. Filmed in and around Romania, Subspecies was Charles Band's answer to the vampire genre. It's actually one of the better and more atmospheric of the Full Moon Entertainment's main era of productivity. I'm slightly more partial to the Puppet Master series, but this is probably the best film that the company ever produced. It's also one of the better vampire films to come out of the 90's. Anders Hove is fantastic in his lead role, and there's also some great stop-motion work. I already mentioned the atmospherics, but the setting and set designs are great as well, and the fact that it was shot entirely on location in Romania just makes it all the more creepy. It's not anything amazing story-wise, but for atmosphere, design and just sheer creepiness, it soars. Definitely check it out if you haven't already.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

When people point out Vincent Price's films to me, the one that's usually not mentioned is this pre-cursor to the Saw series: The Abominable Dr. Phibes. It's a wonderfully engaging pseudo-horror classic, edging more towards cynicism rather than straight up horror, making it a bit unusual for its time. Dr. Phibes has apparently come back from the dead, and along with his beautiful assistant, he carries out a scheme to murder all of the doctors who couldn't save his dying wife. Each death has a particular theme to it, and while there isn't much gore to be found, there's a bit of creepiness to it. The film has more of the attitude of an Amicus anthology film, but it also has one of Vincent Price's finest performances. It's a very bizarre horror film that will have you both horrified and laughing at the same time.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

A film that owes to late night TV where it developed a cult following by fans, Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a psychological horror film in the vein of something like Don't Look Now. It's about a woman who has been recently released from an institution and moves into an old house with her husband and a friend. They discover a young woman who has been living in the house in secret, and while Jessica's sanity slowly slips again, strange things begin to occur around her and she becomes suspicious of the young woman's motives. The film plays with the audience’s perceptions and keeps you in a constant state of confusion, which is exactly what Jessica is going through, and you go through it with her. Everything is ambiguous, leaving you to make up your own mind about whether Jessica is really crazy or not. The film didn't do so well on its initial release, but if you're looking for something obscure with some merit to it, then check this one out.

Raw Meat

Raw Meat is about a group of tunnel dwellers in the London underground who have been trapped there for decades. Through cannibalism and inbreeding, they survive, but their numbers have dwindled and only one manages to make his way out to get his hands on, well, raw meat. This is one of those films that's generally simple in nature, but the atmosphere and performances are pretty superb, including not just a great performance from Donald Pleasance, but from the aforementioned tunnel dweller, whose only piece of dialogue throughout the entire film is "Mind the doors!". The film can be a bit kooky, and there's plenty of ironies to be found, but there's some genuine suspense and atmosphere to it as well.

Waxwork

Waxwork is a horror comedy about a group of teenagers who go into a wax museum, only to be magically made a part of the exhibits and never heard from again. The movie cleverly squeezes so many horror movie moments into it that it's instantly enjoyable. You have werewolves, vampires, zombies, and even Marquis de Sade on display, literally. It's not so much scary as it fun, sort of in the vein of something like Creepshow. Even though it does have some moments where there's some genuine suspense and horror to it, there's just no way that you can take any of it seriously. It's just a fun little movie that doesn't try to be anything more than what it is. Look no further than John Rhys Davies turning into a werewolf. Need I say more?

Breeders

Breeders, for all intents and purposes, isn't a masterpiece. What it is instead is a bit of curiosity. It feels like a David Cronenberg movie in disguise as a late night cable skin flick. My goodness, there's just heaps of nudity in this movie, and all of it gratuitous. The story involves several young female virgins in Manhattan that are abducted and raped by a parasitic alien being and transformed into an alien themselves. The most memorable scene, at least for me, is when all of the women are in the alien's lair and bathing in, umm, alien fluids. Let me just put it this way: if someone walked in on you during this scene and didn't know what you were watching, they'd automatically think it was pornography. 'Nuff said. So yeah, the movie is definitely not for those who don't care for nudity, but if you're in the mood for something simple that has a bit of entertainment value to it but is only mediocre, then check it out.

The People Under the Stairs

Ah, and then there's Wes Craven. His body of work can range from really awful to extremely good, and somewhere in the middle, you'll find something like The People Under the Stairs. Although the movie failed at the box office upon its initial release, it has since developed a bit of a following. It has an overall odd tone to it, which is more ironic than anything, but it also tries to be a suspense film at the same time. It doesn't quite work, but the movie can be fun if you let it. The plot may not make total sense at times, but it's executed well. Look for an early performance from Ving Rhames before his successful turn as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, as well as Silver Bullet star Everett McGill as the leather-clad daddy out to punish the children that are loose in the house.

The Pyjama Girl Case

And last but not least, there's the classic giallo La Ragazza Dal Pigiama Giallo, AKA The Pyjama Girl Case. This film is a stylish but morbid thriller about a girl being found dead and the investigators who are trying to solve her case. Parallel to this is her story as we watch her descent into being murdered. It's a very interesting take on the genre, but the strange thing about it is that it's not really a giallo, yet closely resembles one. It's sort of like if you're a fan of McDonald's and decide to eat at Wendy's instead. The pace can be slow at times, but with a bit of patience, the engrossing story can be rewarding. Well-shot with some great performances (including Ray Milland and the beautiful Dalila Di Lazzaro), it's definitely a classic genre film.

Hopefully these titles will tide you over until next Halloween. If not, then I suggest you get some help.

When it comes to the slasher sub-genre of horror films, it's difficult to find any that are unique and bring something new to the table. Most of the ones that came out of the early 1970's and throughout the 1980's followed a particular formula: teens go into woods; teens drink & do drugs; teens have sex; teens get slaughtered. That pretty much sums up the genre, more or less. Immortalizing that formula was the Friday the 13th franchise, a series of films made specifically to cash in on the success of the original and annually provide entertainment for horror fans.

Technically, the original Friday the 13th film was late in the game as far as slasher movies go. John Carpenter's Halloween had already cleaned up at movie theaters and drive-ins all across the country only two years prior. Even earlier than that was Bob Clark's Black Christmas. That film was more of giallo-type film than a slasher, but you can certainly see the similarities between them all. So if you wanted to be analytical about it, the slasher sub-genre had been created long before Friday the 13th ever came along. It may have not been the first, but it did popularize it while also making headway for many copycats to follow.

Unlike Halloween, the Friday the 13th series was better known for its extensive use of blood and gore, something that Paramount Pictures really got behind and promoted at the beginning of the series. Every year, a new roster of teens would meet their demise in some very creative and, quite often, ridiculous ways. As each film was released, the kills became more and more imaginative, becoming far more important than plot or characterization. Even though the MPAA really came down hard on some of the latter films in the series, the first film escaped relatively unscathed with an R rating, setting the standard for what would be done with the sequels.

Friday the 13th was also one of the early slasher films not to have come from an independent source. It had a slightly higher budget than one would normally have to make these types of films and a major Hollywood studio backing it. In that way, it's highly unusual, as opposed to smaller and more independent films like Halloween, or even the often-overlooked Sleepaway Camp franchise (which parodied Friday the 13th extensively). Unlike their no budget counterparts, the Friday the 13th films found a much bigger audience and were seen by a lot more people.

As far as Jason himself, he became a cultural icon. Ever since he put on that hockey mask in the third film of the series, he's more or less been well-known to popular culture just as much as Freddy Krueger, or even Darth Vader for that matter. He's never been one to have much of a personality either, which the series has had some fun with at times. He's just a killing machine, out for revenge against those who've wronged him. He doesn't talk or quip funny lines. He just stalks his prey and kills it without remorse. He never dwells on it and he never takes prisoners (despite what we've seen in the remake, but I'll get into that later). Even though Jason is at the center of the series, I don't consider him to be the real focal point or the appeal. Fans have always tended to cry foul whenever Paramount (or New Line Cinema) made a Friday the 13th film without the real Jason on-screen doing the killing, but the real draw is the gore, horror and suspense, and not so much the characters. It works ok most of the time, but for someone like me who craves a bit of characterization in what he watches, it can be frustrating. Sometimes the logic of certain things in these films is also a problem, but despite it all, they're still fun to watch.

Even though I'm not quite as big a fan of the Friday the 13th series as I am the Nightmare on Elm Street series by comparison, I certainly don't discount it by any means. As with the Nightmare series, I have a marathon of the Friday the 13th movies every year, and at least once a year; sometimes on Halloween and sometimes on Friday the 13th (all weekend, of course). As a kid, I dressed up a couple of times as Jason for Halloween as well, so I'd say that I'm a fan without being fanatical about it. Some of the films I really enjoy, while others I have some problems with, so I'd like to take this opportunity to dissect the films a bit and explain exactly why I like some more than others. I'll be discussing a lot of the plot details, characters and situations, so if you haven't seen these films and want to avoid spoilers, it's probably the best idea not to read any further. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy it. And whether you agree with my opinions or not, hopefully it'll stir up some good-natured debate amongst us all. So let's get started with the first one.

Friday the 13th

In 1979, Sean Cunningham decided that he was going to, in the words of screenwriter Victor Miller, "Rip off Halloween". They quickly came up with a story, got together with an unknown group of young actors & filmmakers and produced it. The film follows a group of camp counselors who are preparing Camp Crystal Lake for reopening, but instead they're knocked off one by one by an unseen killer. At the end of the film, it's revealed to be an older woman named Mrs. Voorhees, who blames the camp counselors for her son Jason drowning at the camp three decades earlier. She takes her revenge on them, but she's eventually stopped and killed by the lone survivor Alice.

Looking back on it comparatively, Friday the 13th actually opens very much like Halloween. There's the beginning of the film, which takes place in the past in first-person view of the unknown killer, as well as the flash forward to the present with a girl walking through town, not unlike Laurie Strode from Halloween. However, this is where the film severs its visual detachment from that film. From this point on it follows its own route without heavy-handed allusions to other horror films (despite there being a nod to The Shining when Mrs. Voorhees is trying to break the pantry door down with an axe and afterwards peering in at Alice).

There are plenty of good things to like about this first film. There's quite a bit of set-up and building the suspense up in the story. There's the character of Ralph, the doom-prophesizing old geezer who seems to materialize out of nowhere at times. There's also a great little group of actors, including a young Kevin Bacon in one of his first films. There's some fantastic special effects from Tom Savini, as well as Harry Manfredini's signature score, which would more or less stick for the rest of the series. So yeah, there's plenty to like. It's in some of the technical and plot details where the movie fails a bit for me and doesn't hold up as well as it should.

The one thing to remember here though is that when this film was being made, there were no thoughts of this becoming a huge movie franchise. Sean Cunningham himself thought that the idea of bringing Jason to the forefront as a killer who had somehow survived drowning and was living in the wilderness was ludicrous and that it wouldn't work, a view shared by many others who worked on the original film. This was nothing more than a low-budget horror film designed to cash in on the success of its predecessor Halloween. It's just that simple, and the filmmakers aren't coy about admitting to it either. However, now that there's a long-running series of films, minor details become more crucial when they're all stacked up together. Continuity issues with the story are probably the biggest flaw of the series, among many other things.

The biggest flaw of the first film, at least to me, is that the killer is being built up visually as a man. If you look closely, the killer is not only dressed like a man but also the hands of a man are doing the killing. Most of us probably already know that it was prosthetic and special effects maestro Tom Savini doing the kills for the most part, but for a film that's trying to follow a story thread as much as this one does, this jumps out at me as a major error. That's why it really comes out of left field when you find out that it's a middle-aged crazy woman. In a twisted sort of way, the killings are very efficient, and the killer doesn't really waste time or effort in carrying them out. That's why I've never quite fully bought the reveal of Jason's mother, especially when she's clumsily trying to kill Alice. At one point she has her cornered and there's no way that she's able to get away, and Mrs. Voorhees does nothing more than smack her around. Or how about the moment when she amusingly tries to stab her on the beach with the end of a broken oar? It's a bit of a let-down, but I don't hold it too harshly against the film.

I also find it strange that the family that owns Crystal Lake, the Christy's, is never mentioned again in the sequels. In fact, this particular spot of land seems to change hands with different owners without even a mention. Details like this are mostly minor and frivolous, but even a slight mention of it would have made the sequels tie in to the first film a bit more directly. There are also all sorts of visual continuity errors from film to film as well, such as the fact that there's a different Camp Crystal Lake sign in nearly every film. Other minor details are simply forgotten or brushed over in the sequels, which is to me why the first film doesn't really feel like the first film. Overall, it's a mixed bag of great special effects and questionable minor details, at least as they apply to the sequels.

However, none of these things were much of a factor when the film was released on May 9, 1980. It was one of the first independent films to be released nationally across the country, and the investment paid off. Friday the 13th brought in big profits, along with an awareness that films like it were great business for teenagers on a Friday night. Soon after, a sequel was developed without the involvement of the original director, who wasn't happy with the direction that it would take. Despite it being held up as a classic, I don't like the first film as much as I do a some of the sequels that followed.

Friday the 13th, Part 2

Frank Mancuso Jr., the head of Paramount Pictures at the time, wasted no time in following through on the success of the previous film, and less than a year later, Friday the 13th Part 2 made its debut. Taking place in an area just a stone's throw away from Camp Crystal Lake, this film follows a group of camp counselors in training, but when they disturb Jason's neck of the woods, the murder spree continues.

Almost unwittingly, Part 2 seems more like a proper slasher film than its predecessor, as well as a better film in general. Not only did it have a higher budget, but it also focused a bit more on the characters. You got to know them a bit, and they weren't just the clichéd partying teenagers looking to get wasted and screw around all night long. They seem more like real people. They did take the sexual plunge, of course, but it feels more believable comparatively. It's great to see at least one of these films have not just characterization, but motivation as well. For instance, Ginny and Paul, the head counselors, have a strange relationship with each other, and you can tell that there's some sort of rift between them involving something we know nothing about. Paul's motivation throughout the film is to make her like him again and Ginny's motivation is to try and get over whatever the problem is between them. It's not mentioned out loud in detail, but it's there for those paying close attention. You just don't find that kind of subtlety in any of these films.

The rest of the characters are interesting too, even the half naked girl who contributes nothing most of the time except to be eye candy. Her motivation is to try and win Scott, who's after her in a big bad way. The skinny redheaded guy, Ted, is out to have a good time, and is genuinely funny and likable. The motivation of the wheelchair-bound guy, Mark, is to be more than what he is and ultimately get out of the wheelchair, and his love interest is intrigued by him because of this. However, it's the other couple in the film that don't seem to fit into this more realistic scheme too well. They like to cause trouble, and you can tell that about them immediately. They feel shoehorned in just to get the plot underway, but at least they have some sort of purpose because they're useless otherwise. When Paul warns the group not to trespass near Camp Crystal Lake, these two do just that. And by doing so, they invade Jason's home turf.

Part 2 also has some distinguishable visual flair, and that's saying a lot for a series that's looked down on justifiably for being so cheaply made. Thanks mostly goes to Steve Miner, who would go on to direct the next film, as well. The film also borrows a couple of deaths from the Mario Bava giallo classic Twitch of the Death Nerve. In particular, the double impalement of the troublesome couple with a spear, as well as the infamous machete to the face of the kid in the wheelchair. The kills aren't quite as bloody or as gory as the first film because of the MPAA coming down hard on the final cut, but they seem to have more of an impact.

The film's biggest problem for most people at the time (especially the people that made the first film) was that Jason was alive somehow despite drowning in 1957. It's a bit of a logical lapse, but for me personally I've just always assumed Jason to be a supernatural force of some kind anyway, considering how much damage he can dish out as well as take. I don't think a normal human being could squeeze someone's skull in and make their eyes pop out (not that the filmmakers really had that in mind at the time). Like the fourth entry later, this film has a group of teenagers that we like and we don't necessarily want to see them meet an early demise, especially Amy Steel's character. She's not the typical heroine and she adds a bit of substance to the film. It's also nice that they set her up early on as someone who's studying child psychology, which she uses to her advantage against Jason. She understands him, as evidenced in the bar scene where she talks about his relationship with his mother. It's very clever and well set up. I also prefer Jason's look in this film, with the potato sack over his head, and not because it's a slight take on The Town That Dreaded Sundown, but because it's not the hockey mask for once. It's just too bad that they couldn't focus their efforts on coming up with a more satisfying ending that made a little bit more sense, but I digress.

Released on April 30, 1981, Friday the 13th Part 2 once again brought in the revenues, and I think it's pretty apparent that I'm a big fan of this film. Nearly all aspects of it work perfectly for me, and it feels more like a film than just a generic slasher. I'm sure that the filmmakers were only merely concerned with making an entertaining slasher movie without much thought into how it was constructed, but it doesn't matter because they did well on all fronts. It's one of the underappreciated films in the series, at least compared to The Final Chapter and The New Blood, but Part 2 is really where this series begins for me. It's not a carbon copy of the first film but it carries more genuine suspense and is much a better film by comparison. It's a shame that this couldn't be latched onto in the sequels that followed. After this film, Jason is nothing more than a killing machine with no psychological nuances. He simply kills to kill, to the point where it became a bit of joke later on. The kills also became bigger and broader and seemed to have little to no substance or reason. Admittedly, this isn't a series that really goes for that kind of thing, but I just wonder what it would have been like if it had, which brings me to Part 3.

Friday the 13th, Part 3 (3-D)

The third outing from Jason & Co. is probably my second least favorite of the entire series, mainly because it's such a drop off in quality from its predecessor. The direction that Part 2 took seemed like a good way to go for the series, at least to me. It was well-made, well-shot, had some nice characterization and wasn't chock-full of horror clichés. Its strong storytelling aspects were completely ditched because the focus of Part 3 was to make the gimmicky 3-D work. The story itself is about a girl who returns to the area of Crystal Lake after having been attacked by a strange man in the woods there long ago. Her and her friends stay in a farm house nearby, and one by one, Jason takes them out.

I'll go ahead and start this off by saying that I mostly dislike 3-D, whether its being used as a storytelling tool or as simply a gimmick. It doesn't ever fully work no matter how it's being used, and usually story is sacrificed because of it. Just look at Avatar, which used the 3-D to tell its story, but that story was so simple-minded that it was ridiculous. On the other hand, there's the gimmicky 3-D, as used in Friday the 13th Part 3. Characters spend their time awkwardly sticking objects toward the camera lens, such as when Jason fires a harpoon directly at the camera. It's cheesy, and definitely doesn't add anything in 2-D. I've attempted to watch the film in 3-D a couple of times, but it ended up giving me a headache more than anything.

As a consequence, everything else in the film suffers. The dialogue is probably some of the most atrocious of any of the films. For instance, blood drips from the ceiling and a character asks out loud to themselves "where is this coming from?". The delivery of the dialogue isn't much better, as evidenced by the lead actress. The characters are also more thinly-drawn. They have no substance or character motivation, except Shelly, who just wants to be accepted. The problem is that he intentionally scares and angers everyone around him all the time, and is sad when no one understands. Logic is also thrown straight out of the window in this one, just to have more scare value (albeit cheaply). This is also the film where Jason becomes a Timex watch (you know their slogan so I don't need to repeat it). He's bashed in the head, hanged and takes an axe to the face, yet somehow survives it all. I guess this is where his supernatural abilities come into play. Yeah sure, whatever. They even did a bit of retconning at the beginning of the film, tossing out the final moments of Part 2.

To be fair, there are some unintentionally funny things and moments throughout the film, including the film's uncredited actor, the barn. For some reason or another, the barn plays a significant role in the film because everyone is attracted to it like ants to sugar. People go inside it for no reason other than because it's there. Shelly even knows where the light switch in the barn is, even though he's never been in there before. It's where Jason does most of his dirty work in the film and where he seems to be hiding out at times, but it feels like the film is trying its hardest to include it as a main character. There's also that terrible moment at the end of the film when Jason's mother pops up out of the water to grab Chris, which is a carbon copy of the first film when young Jason pops up out of the water and grabs Alice. Why they decided to do this is beyond me. It's negated in the next scene anyways and makes no sense whatsoever.

Even though I dislike a lot of the things about the film, there are some good points to it. The characters and situations themselves don't feel like familiar territory. Sure it's a group of teenagers getting together for a good time, but they don't feel clichéd. We have the lead who's been away for a while (presumably in a mental hospital, but that's just a guess), her love interest who really isn't much of an interest to her at all (and a bit of a wuss for a so-called "country boy"), the pregnant couple, the awkward guy who never learned how to socialize with other people, the lonely girl who sees nothing in the lonely guy but friendship, and finally, the older-looking pot-smoking couple (why are they in this group of people?). So this isn't just another set of promiscuous and rebellious teenagers looking for a good time with lots of sex, drugs and alcohol. It's very tame in that regard. There's also the biker gang, who are only around to increase the film's body count and contribute nothing to the overall plot.

The special effects themselves are about average. The only death sequences in the film really worth mentioning would be Andy's character being split in half and Debbie's character taking a machete through the chest from underneath. I like that the film has the guts to kill a pregnant woman, even though she doesn't look pregnant. The best thing about the film overall is the opening and closing theme, which is catchy and funky. The score is pretty much the same, but that funky intro and outro is quite terrific (not that it improved the film all that much).

Making its way into theaters on August 13, 1982, Friday the 13th Part 3 wasn't as stellar a hit as its predecessors but it did pretty good business considering. The critics hated it (like they did all of the films) but the fans generally seemed to get into it. The sequels always have their pros and cons, and while some are better than others, some are just not that great. Part 3 falls into the latter category for me. However, it's not the worst film in the series. It's definitely worth watching, but when you're having a marathon of these movies, you can't wait to get to the next one.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

After three films and Frank Mancuso Jr. feeling like he was being typecast as just a "horror producer", Paramount decided to close out the Friday the 13th series and kill off Jason once and for all with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Despite the fact that Part 3 was originally meant to be the last film, the producers went ahead with the project, bringing in Joseph Zito, who had some success with The Prowler a couple of years earlier. Also returning to the fold was Tom Savini, who Zito had worked with previously.

The film is more or less a copy of Part 3 storywise, but with a family next door thrown into the mix. This time around we're treated to another group of teenagers that we actually like, including a young Crispin Glover (who went on to film Back to the Future a year later). Although the difference this time is that the teenagers are simply out to party and get laid, even the young virgin. By this point, this series was pretty much well-known as being filled with horny teenagers who would get their comeuppance, even though it's not all that clear cut. We're also introduced to a young Corey Feldman, whose character would be Jason's ultimate foil. Having a kid be under threat from Jason was something new too, and raised the stakes a bit.

While the special effects are pretty great, The Final Chapter isn't as strong a film as had I hoped it would be. The unnecessary character of Rob, who was looking for the man who killed his sister, is pretty much swept under the table and meets his demise early on in the third act, leaving little to no resolution to that character at all. Sure he attempts to save Tommy's sister, but he feels useless and tacked on, adding nothing to the overall plot (as do the promiscuous doctor and nurse at the beginning of the film). It also seemed like a missed opportunity to dig deeper into Jason's backstory and his family history. It's clearly evident that Paramount didn't put much thought into it and was only concerned with producing a horror film with a body count that would turn a profit and not much else.

An interesting aspect to overall story up to this point is that if you break down the timeline of films 2 through 4, you realize that they take place over the course of a week in different locations in and around Camp Crystal Lake. I find that absolutely insane. If something like that happened in the real world, there might have been a constant dragnet of police checking over the area, especially since Jason is still alive. After all, they just might be looking for him. Instead, he just goes unhindered and murders everybody he crosses paths with. The people he kills aren't even aware of the murders happening around them (except the general store couple at the beginning of Part 3, but they barely count as characters anyway). Most people probably don't even think about it much though because the story isn't focused in that direction anyways. We're just here to watch a bunch of teenagers get slaughtered over and over again.

This is also the last film in the series where Jason is still human. Two sequels later he would be resurrected, literally, and would be almost superhuman. That wasn't in anybody's minds at the time though. Jason really bites the dust in this one, and there's no wink-wink moment at the end where you know he'll return. I've always thought that the final moment of the film, wherein Tommy stares blankly into the camera, was to signify Tommy's loss on reality, and not that he would be taking up Jason's mantle. The people who made the next sequel, however, didn't feel the same way.

Released on April 13, 1984, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter brought in a lot of dough for Paramount, and they immediately went back on their intentions to end the franchise and quickly got another sequel in development. Oh, if only Jason would have known how many times he would arise like Lazarus, he probably would have stayed underwater. Overall, this is a solid entry in the series, but for me, it's missing something that made Part 2 work so well, mainly the solid character development and suspense factor. Not that The Final Chapter isn't good, but Tom Savini's effects are the real star in this one and not necessarily the story. Although, it was probably thought out much more than the next film.

Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning

After The Final Chapter raked in the profits, the decision was made to continue the story, but without Jason. It was a blow from the very beginning of the process, which had many more blows to follow. For this reason alone, the film gets a bad rap as the redheaded step-child of the series. The idea seemed to have been for Tommy to be traumatized by going through yet another experience with Jason, or at least someone like Jason. Afterwards, Tommy would lose it and become the new killer. It's heavily implied at the end of the film when the famous music motif of "Kill, kill, kill... Ma, Ma, Ma" becomes "Kill, kill, kill... Ta, Ta, Ta". Although it turned a nice profit, it was met with immediate disapproval from fans and critics alike, but is Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning really that bad?

Well, yes and no. For me personally, it comes off like a black comedy, or almost a spoof of Friday the 13th (despite spoofs like the Sleepaway Camp series or Saturday the 14th popping up around this time). It wasn't intentional, but because it's so poorly-made, it feels that way to me. The entire plot revolves around an ambulance driver named Roy being driven to kill using Jason's appearance to hide his identity. The kills are mostly random people: two greasers with a broken-down car, Tommy's ambulance driver & girlfriend and Reggie's brother & girlfriend. The teenagers in question don't even get it until towards the end of the film. I guess if you're going to go insane and start killing people you probably would have a target, and not just murder everybody in sight the way Jason did. It would have made a little more sense if they had just made Tommy the killer from the very beginning instead of Roy, but oh well. That's the direction that they chose to take.

The kills themselves are pretty lame as well, for the most part. The most impressive one is actually Roy's death, when he lands on a bed of spikes (why there's a bed of spikes near that barn, I'll never know). The rest are pretty unimaginative and poorly executed. The characters themselves don't really have any depth to them either. There's an attempt to have the stuttering kid have a crush on one of the girls and be rejected by her, but it just feels useless more than anything, and doesn't come in until the third act anyway. The film is visually uninteresting as well. It all just stinks of sloppiness, which seems to be the case. They just seemed to have rushed through it quickly just to get another Friday the 13th film into theaters the following year.

The things that make the film funny are the unintentional things, like Junior and his mother, who are terrible people, but unintentionally hilarious. Their entire existence in the film is wanting to see the teenagers at the nuthouse next door killed if they ever set foot on their property, meanwhile bickering amongst themselves. Other things like the two pot-smoking, sex-crazed teenagers (including a very healthy Debi Sue Voorhees, who apparently got the job for her name and not just her assets). The two just want to have sex all the time and act fairly normal, making you question just how crazy these teenagers really are. Doesn't seem like it to me. But the best laugh in the entire film comes when Pam, Tommy and Reggie are driving down the road to see Reggie's brother at a nearby trailer park. The ride there is completely uneventful and needlessly takes place over the course of about 30 seconds, but they underscored with threatening horror-type music, for no apparent reason. It makes me laugh every single time I see it.

There are also lots of missed opportunities with this sequel. We have the opening with Tommy's nightmare where we see him as a kid, watching Jason come out of his grave and kill him (with a reprisal by Corey Feldman, who shot the scene on his day off from The Goonies), but the question is never answered about what happened to Tommy's sister. They were both alive at the end of The Final Chapter, but yet again, the filmmakers retconned the story into saying that Tommy's entire family was killed by Jason. They also didn't bother to dig any deeper into Jason's or Tommy's backstories, which judging by the direction they took, didn't even cross their minds. I think that it's a safe bet to say that when they decided to make Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives that they chose to just totally ignore the events of the previous film. If you think about it, the entire plot about Tommy going crazy, taking up Jason's mantle and Jason's body being cremated were entirely abandoned, and neither film before or after it depends on it at all. In that way, it's very much like Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The entire story involving Michael Myers was dropped in that film for a completely different story about something else. That's the way that A New Beginning feels to me, despite still being enjoyable in a 'so bad that it's good' kind of way. Danny Steinman (who also directed Savage Streets, as well as having a history in pornography, and it shows) may have gone in with good intentions, but the overall product is ultimately left out of the Friday the 13th pantheon.

Released on March 22, 1985, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning certainly made a profit for the studio, but was an enormous let-down for fans of the series. When the dust settled, this disapproval was later felt by the studio as well, although I don't think it should be overlooked just because it doesn't fit into the series as snugly as it should. Hell, the first film doesn't. It can be very entertaining if you look at it from the right perspective. In all honesty, you probably won't get the humor on your first time through, but after it settles with you and you see it again, you can begin to see a lot of the unintentional ironies in it. For good or bad, the series continued on and went in a much more satisfactory direction afterwards.

Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives

After the disapproval over the final product of A New Beginning, Paramount decided to resurrect Jason with a sixth sequel. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives would have a slightly bigger budget, a better director, a better story and more interesting actors. With director Tom McLoughlin at the helm, the series took a more apparent humorous direction than an unintentional one like in the previous film. McLoughlin wanted the film to have more entertainment value, and included allusions to other movies for film fans. He ultimately got what he wanted and Jason Lives wound up being the most popular sequel, up to this point anyway.

Instead of sticking to the gratuitous Friday the 13th formula of the previous films, Tom McLoughlin decided to completely rework the formula, making it not only satisfying and entertaining to fans of the series, but to newcomers as well. It honors the series and even other horror films of the past with visual references abound, including the electrifying rebirth of Jason ALA Frankenstein's monster. This was also the film where Jason became the superhuman zombie we all know him as today.

It was also decided to bring in a fresh roster of camp counselors and a group of kids, as well. Adding kids to the dynamic really raised the stakes, and made what Jason was doing in an around the camp more threatening. At the same time, comedy was thrown into the mix and both aspects managed to work well together. In retrospect, the whole thing could have been a real disaster. Making enormous changes could have spelled real doom for the series if it hadn't been received well, although I don't think it would have stopped Paramount from making further sequels. They seemed secure enough to release whatever they wanted to at this point.

There are also some great performances from the actors as well, including Thom Matthews as Tommy (replacing Corey Feldman and John Shepherd from the previous films), David Kagen as the town Sheriff and Jennifer Cooke as his rebellious daughter Megan. It's also interesting that they dropped Crystal Lake as a name. In the film, the Sheriff explains to Tommy that they renamed the town to Forest Green because they wanted to forget about what Jason did there. Now I've always assumed that Crystal Lake was the name of the camp and not the entire town, but they really drive it home in this film that Crystal Lake and Forest Green were not just the names for the camp site, but the entire town as well. It's not that big of a deal, and it's something that the audience doesn't really think about, but it does leave a slight hole in the overall scheme of things. Not that continuity between films has never been a problem before or since, but this was always one aspect that bothered me specifically for some reason.

As I stated when talking about A New Beginning, they also decided to retcon all of the events of the previous film. In the beginning of Jason Lives, Tommy is fresh out of an institution, but instead of beginning his life anew, he decides instead to dig up Jason's resting place and cremate him. Unintentionally, he resurrects Jason and, for the rest of the film, is on a mission to stop him. So Tommy inadvertently causes the deaths of a number of people. Whew, that's got to make you feel bad about yourself, huh?

Anyways, the film also benefits from a slightly higher budget than the previous films. Everything looks and sounds so much better. You can tell that a strong effort was really put into the look and sound of the film. They also decided to go out and get Alice Cooper to do a song for the film, which became a modest hit when the film opened. The special effects and the kills were also much better, much more imaginative and more fun this time around. Look no further than Jason stabbing a guy at the wheel of a motor home in the side of the head and causing the thing to crash and burn. We had never seen a stunt this big in a Friday the 13th film before, which made the film seem even bigger and more sophisticated than it was. Attention to detail was vital for this crew of filmmakers, and it really shows.

Opening on August 1, 1986, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives was a big hit, and a welcome return for fans who had been let down by the less than mediocre film before it. Of all of the sequels, this is the one that has the most entertainment value to it, and coincidentally ties with the second film as being my favorite. It's a near perfect sequel that makes you wonder why they didn't just go in this direction in the first place. In retrospect, I guess they had to make a bad follow-up sequel in order to follow through and make a really good one, but it's a shame that it had to happen that way. I'm still grateful though, because this is a great film, and really the last great film of the series. It's too bad that they couldn't repeat this level of fun and quality.

Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood

Less than two years later, Paramount re-surfaced the series with the seventh sequel: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Bringing in special effects guru John Carl Buechler on to direct, this time there wouldn't be as many positive aspects to the final product, at least in my opinion. As far as the film itself goes, it's more or less a repeat of The Final Chapter in some ways. There's a party about to happen next door to a family, but in this instance, the family is broken and dysfunctional. It's a mother and her daughter seeking refuge away from the world with a psychologist, who is seemingly attempting to help the daughter overcome a kind of psychosis after seeing her father die when she was young.

The film was originally meant to be Freddy VS. Jason, which is maybe why there are vague similarities with the film that eventually came later. However, Paramount Pictures didn't own the rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street or the character of Freddy, and when they couldn't reach an agreement on character and distribution rights with New Line Cinema, the project was scrapped and re-purposed. The story was changed to incorporate some of the elements from that script, but with a telekinetic girl instead, who could use the power of her mind to throw objects at Jason to defend herself. The idea may seem a bit far-fetched, even for this series, but I guess if you can buy a superhuman zombie killing people in some very extreme and nasty ways then I guess you'd also have to buy into this as well.

The New Blood is mostly credited with containing the definitive Jason: a zombie that's been trapped under water, looks very bulky and a bit skeletal at times (I can't imagine how he smells). It's also the first film in the series where Jason is portrayed by Kane Hodder, a stuntman turned actor (having been previously played by Ari Lehman, Steve Daskawisz, Warrington Gillette, Richard Brooker, Ted White and C.J. Graham, respectively). The difference between the previous portrayals is Hodder's intensity. Jason is now a violent killing machine, and not just merely a killer. His take on the character was a welcome change to fans and it's the reason that he was brought back for the next two sequels. People tend to give the film a lot of credit for both of these reasons, but I think they've got blinders on in that regard.

Being the successor to Jason Lives, the film feels mainly disappointing because it doesn't really bring much new to the table. Sure the telekinesis is certainly a new element, but everything surrounding it feels like the same old territory. While The New Blood has some very sparse character development, it's the lead character that really makes the film take a nosedive. She's constantly weeping and in a near catatonic state throughout the entire film. She's also socially awkward and hung up on the death of her father, but these things go hand in hand in nearly every scene in the film, and it gets old really fast. By the time she learns to harness her mental abilities and stop Jason, I'd already grown tired of her and would've gladly cheered on her demise. The rest of the characters don't have much to speak of, other than the double-crossing psychologist who claims to be trying to help Tina, but is really out to exploit her abilities. It's rather fitting that his character gets the most over-the-top and ridiculous kill in the film.

Speaking of which, the deaths in the film become more and more silly as the film goes on. Some aren't very creative, like Jason throwing someone out of a window (which we've seen before), but some are beyond extreme and really reach out for the entertainment value. The most talked-about death is when Jason takes the sleeping bag with the girl in it and slams her into a tree (only once in the home video version but several times in the theatrical release). The rest include a party favor to the eye, a standard axe to the face and a lackluster drowning in the lake. It feels a lot milder in comparison to the last film, but Hodder's menacing performance makes Jason much more threatening, and Hodder really throws himself into the role. The most impressive stunt in the film is when Hodder falls backwards through a staircase (nearly killing him, according to him).

This is also the entry in the series where the MPAA came down the hardest on the final cut, as well. Unfortunately, all of the cut footage has been lost forever and we'll never get to see an uncut version of The New Blood, which is a shame. It wouldn't improve the story or the lackluster elements themselves, but it would be interesting to see nonetheless. Overall, the film has some pretty decent moments and some genuine suspense in spots, but it pales in comparison to the entry before it. The anti-climactic end of the film doesn't help much either, which is so quickly brushed over that it feels like a rush to get to the end credits. Just a quick cut to an ambulance driving away and, boom, it's all over. No finality, no commentary, no nothing.

When Paramount released Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood on May 13, 1988, it proved once again that Jason still had some staying power. I think a lot of this success had to do with coming off of the success of Jason Lives, kind of like how A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master was a big success because of the popularity of the previous film, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors. It feels very much like that to me, because in both cases, the final product wasn't nearly as compelling or as interesting as the one before it. Don't get me wrong though. I don't think that the film is a total waste, but at this point, it's definitely starting to feel like these movies are beginning to tread water, which is ironic considering the direction of the next film.

Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

When Paramount hired Rob Hedden to write and direct the next film, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, they wanted him to incorporate some kind of finality to the series (despite the franchise being seemingly ended in two of the previous films). The original series definitely ended at Paramount Pictures, but mostly for the wrong reasons. My feeling about it is that they wanted to close out the series before they sold the rights to New Line Cinema, so that the series would be bookended somehow and New Line wouldn't be able to make a direct sequel (which is what ended up happening). Regarded by most fans as the worst of the series, Jason Takes Manhattan was disowned early on because of its misleading title. Despite the detractors and the hardcore fan community seemingly hating it outright, I'll admit that I kind of like Jason Takes Manhattan more than The New Blood.

Now before you start sending me vicious hate mail, let me explain myself a bit. At the time this film was released, the Friday the 13th series had become stale. It had been sort of rebirthed two films earlier, but there wasn't much left that you could do with it without getting ridiculous. To add to that, the public seemed to be getting tired of Jason and his status in pop culture made him more a figure of fun than anything else. If they were going to do another film, they needed to do something pretty risky, and there's no mistake about it: Jason Takes Manhattan IS a risky film, but unfortunately it's a risk that didn't pay off. For starters, it was nice that we weren't stuck on dry land at a summer camp or a similar location again. We've seen that so many times, not to mention the cavalcade of other slasher films doing the same thing over and over again. It was definitely time for a change of setting. It's basically the same plot of murdering a bunch of teenagers (or anyone else that gets in Jason's way), but it's more appealing visually.

There also seems to be an element of creativity to it. Anyone who has seen the deleted scenes from the film might realize that they were really trying to develop the characters a bit more, and give them some motivation outside of running from a maniac. Renny's character, for instance, has a fear of the water and is trying to overcome that fear. The captain of the boat also has a slight arc to him, despite his early demise. There are some clever things in the film as well, such as when they have one of the characters walking around with a camcorder and when he loses his glasses, he pulls focus on the camera to see properly (only to discover Jason in front of him). Overall, the film seems more creative and more engaging than most people give it credit for.

That being said, yes, the film definitely has a lot of flaws. A plethora of questions seem to pop up in most of our minds when we see the film. Since when is Crystal Lake connected to a waterway that leads out to sea? Why does Jason revert to a little boy at the end of the film? Why doesn't the ship start sinking despite taking on all that water? Since when did Jason learn to teleport? Why did the captain not bleed when his throat was slit? Why was Tamara even allowed on the boat in the first place if she hadn't completed her senior project? If Renny is only hallucinating because of her trauma as a child, then why does her dog see her hallucinations too? Why do the sewers of New York flush out toxic waste every night? All of these questions have been burning up fans for years, including myself, and contribute to the film's overall dislike.

The biggest flaw of Jason Takes Manhattan, however, is the fact that despite the title, Jason doesn't even set foot in Manhattan until the last thirty minutes or so of the film. Unwittingly or not, all that did was basically set up audiences for disappointment, which is where the film ultimately failed. It would have been great to see Jason all over New York City, causing mayhem left and right with pedestrians, thieves, hookers and policemen. Sadly, the budget didn't allow for that, but they based the title and advertising campaign around it anyway. In my opinion, it was a huge mistake on Paramount's part to do that. If it had been titled something like "Jason's Final Voyage", "The Final Friday", or anything else that didn't have Manhattan or New York in the title, I think it might have fared a bit better than it did (no pun intended).

They also made the mistake of trying to come up with a backstory for the lead character of Renny without really paying it off. She is nearly drowned by Jason as a young girl and develops a bit of a psychosis because of it. Over the course of the film she has these hallucinations of a young Jason calling for help and near the end of the film, she brings forth her repressed memory of nearly being drowned. At the very end, Jason becomes that little boy again, leaving us with many unanswered questions. It's also unclear about her parents and why she's having to be looked after like an orphan, but her main focus is to get over her fear of the water, which is tied into Jason's story, somehow. If you're confused, don't be ashamed. Also, what is it with this series and making the lead characters basket cases or people with deep psychological problems? They really ran that one into the ground, didn't they?

Both the acting and the kills in the film are pretty good, at least more imaginative than the previous film. We also finally get another harbinger of doom again like Crazy Ralph from the first two films. The film tries to play with the idea that he might also be in on the killing, but it's a dead end, of course, when he's found with an ax in his back. The best kill in the film, however (and one of my favorites from the entire series), is the boxer's death. He spends at least a minute and a half of screen time punching Jason repeatedly until he tires out. When he does, Jason grabs him and punches his head clean off. We switch to his point of view as his head tumbles off of the roof and into a dumpster. It's built up wonderfully to that moment and you have to laugh out loud when it happens. It's also nice that for once everybody knows there's a killer on board early on, instead of each of them finding out one by one. It gives the film a bit more urgency and better suspense value, at least to me.

Released on July 28, 1989, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan saw a disappointing decline at the box office, and became the least money-making film of the series. Some of it had to do with the disappointment of the film not living up to its title, but I think it had more to do with the public just being sick of Jason. There had been a film in the series released almost once a year since the debut of the first one in 1980, and the grueling pace had finally caught up with the series. As with the previous film, it also came under heavy scrutiny from the MPAA and, as a consequence, isn't as bloody or as brutal with the onscreen violence as you would expect. Despite all of its problems, the film is much more entertaining for me, and is FAR better than what came next.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Four years would go by without another Friday the 13th sequel. The series seemed to have run its course, but despite that, New Line Cinema purchased the sequel rights to the character and story. While Freddy VS. Jason was still stuck in development hell, the decision was made to make a definitive final film in the franchise that would ultimately lead to the match-up between the two icons. What we got from director Adam Marcus and Sean S. Cunningham, who produced the film, was Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. However, this time around there would be very few positive aspects to the proceedings.

The story involves Jason being killed by the F.B.I. at the beginning of the film. The only problem is that his spirit takes over other people's bodies until he can be reborn through one of his blood relatives: his sister, her daughter or her daughter's daughter. Hot on Jason's trail is Creighton Duke, a bounty hunter who is out to destroy Jason once and for all, but only with the help Jason's sister's daughter and her ex-husband John. According to Duke, Jason can only die by the hand of a Voorhees... with the use of the Necronomicon and Candarian dagger from The Evil Dead found in the Voorhees house. Right.

Not only is Jason Goes to Hell my least favorite film in the series, it's also probably the worst overall. You would have thought that after the backlash of A New Beginning, wherein someone was pretending to be Jason, that they would have foregone the idea of Jason inhabiting the bodies of other people in order to survive, but no. They went with it anyway, and we had to suffer as a consequence. To be fair, Jason IS onscreen in the film, but only for about fifteen minutes, if that. The rest of the time we have to watch actor after actor pretending to be him. Also in this film, instead of Jason being a supernatural serial killer just out for revenge against those who've wronged him, we learn that he's also an evil spirit. It reminds me a lot of the direction that the Halloween series took. After they had done all they could do with the reality of each series, they had to get some unreality in there. In fact, there are quite a few similarities between the franchises at this point that it becomes both ironic and ridiculous.

It's also abundantly clear that after Jason Lives filmmakers were more comfortable in making more and more changes to the series to prevent it from becoming stale. This isn't a bad thing, per se, because it was indeed stale, but perhaps just leaving the series alone and not making anymore sequels would probably have been the best idea. New Line Cinema taking over the franchise didn't really help that much either. I think they hoped to breathe new life into it somehow, but instead they were just flogging a dead horse.

I know I'm bitching quite a bit and you're probably asking yourself 'is there anything positive to this film?' Well, the actors do an ok job with their roles, I suppose (not that there's much there to work with in the first place). The dialogue is gut-wrenchingly bad most of the time, so there's no room for creativity there. Some of the gore effects are pretty good, in particular the melting man scene (despite the scene not making much sense). The only really good scene in the film is the jail scene between the characters of Duke and John when Duke breaks John's fingers in order for him to "pay" for information about Jason. It’s the moment when the film stops being schlock for a few minutes and actually pulls off something character-driven and interesting. It seems to have a nice build to it, and it's about the only really positive thing I can say about it. Everything surrounding it is garbage.

I've already talked about the awful plotline, and there are many scenes that accessorize that awfulness. The scene that really stuck out as not making any sense was when Jason (disguised as the coroner from earlier in the film) has a naked man strapped to a table and proceeds to shave him before the "evil spirit" leaves him and enters his body. While he's shaving him, the guy says "What the hell are you doing?", which is what I was wondering myself. Why exactly does Jason do this? What will it achieve? He's already in disguise as another person so why would making him look different be any help to him at all? And why does the guy melt into a pile of goop after Jason leaves his body for another? The guy wasn't dead or anything. He was just possessed, more or less. There's also the scene when Jason attacks everybody in the diner and suddenly this little waitress becomes superchick, shooting shotguns with efficiency and moving with stealth (all in slow motion, I might add). Or how about the moment when John goes to the Voorhees' family house, only to discover it's a mansion of some kind with a large playground out back? The mailbox doesn't even have the proper spelling of the name on it. It says "Vorhees", despite the name being spelled correctly elsewhere in the film.

Other mistakes include the score for the film, which is absolutely terrible. I've never really objected to Harry Manfredini's score before, or cared that people accused him of blatantly ripping off the score from Psycho, but it stands out in this film as just needlessly appalling. It's basically a synthesizer-driven score that's trying to be epic in scale, but it just sounds like a MIDI file most of the time. It's not even laughable, it's just annoying. I'm sure the point was to signify with the music that this was a big film, but it fails miserably. It ends up just sounding over-the-top and sticks out like a sore thumb.

However, the biggest mistake that the filmmakers made was that in going with the storyline that Jason inhabits other people's bodies that Kane Hodder wasn't one of those bodies. Sure, he has a small cameo as a SWAT team guy who Jason murders off-camera, but it was a missed opportunity for people to see Hodder onscreen for once in this scenario. To be honest, I don't believe that the filmmakers thought that much about the actual content of the film while making it. They just showed up and did their jobs. There doesn't seem to be any passion or logic behind anything that's happening. You might be sitting there wondering why I'm disregarding this film as opposed to Jason Takes Manhattan, where I slightly defended it. Well, that's the reason. The director was trying to do something different with that film and had a passion for it, as opposed to Jason Goes to Hell, wherein there doesn't seem to be a need to make anything more than just a generic slasher trying to be an epic conclusion, which it fails at tremendously.

Released on August 13, 1993, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was met with lukewarm response, but managed to rake in a bit more cash than the previous sequel. I'm not exactly sure how it has shaped up over time with fans, but I for one find it the least-interesting and most poorly-made of the series. The film manages to depart from the franchise's formula significantly, but in the wrong direction. As I stated previously, there just seemed to be no passion behind it and it felt, more or less, like people just showed up and got it over with, as opposed to something like Jason Lives. It ended up being a black eye to the series anyway because we later learned (unsurprisingly) that this was indeed NOT the final Friday.

Jason X

Nearly 11 years later, New Line Cinema decided to go ahead with yet another Friday the 13th sequel. Part of the decision behind it might have been just to keep Jason relative in people's minds, but also to give die-hard fans of the series something new. The real reason behind it was to make a placeholder for the impending Freddy vs. Jason, which was less than a year away from being made upon the release of Jason X.

I'm sure you're expecting me to sit here and rip this film to pieces, but I honestly can't do that. Why? Because Jason X is a hell of a good time. Most people would contend that the idea of sending Jason into the future and space could very well be the worst idea in the history of the series. Well, that's not totally inaccurate. I had the same reaction when I first heard about it. There was actually a cliché of taking slasher and horror movies into space at the time (perhaps most infamously with the Hellraiser series), and I thought 'wow, they're really going that route?" But as I stated previously, this series, at least at this juncture, needed to make risky moves like this in order to avoid repetition. One could also argue that this series was built solely on repetition, but when you stack these movies up together and watch them back-to-back, you start to develop tunnel vision. It's not until you get something out of left field, like Jason X, that you perk back up and realize that these movies can be fun, even if they're done much differently.

The story is basically about Jason and a young woman, who are accidentally cryogenically frozen, only to be unearthed by a group of scientists in training almost five centuries later. Waking up on a space ship, Jason goes back to his old tricks and murders everyone in sight. Later in the film, Jason is temporarily stopped by the crew aboard the ship, but reborn as a cyborg, and the film earns its title. An insane premise, wouldn't you say? It actually sounds like something from a novel based on the series, or even fan fiction. This actually had the potential to be the worst film in the series, but because of the direction of Jim Isaac and the other talented people behind the camera, it wasn't. It's actually very well-made, and much more engaging and interesting than the previous three sequels (especially Jason Goes to Hell).

There isn't much in the way of standard Friday the 13th story fodder either. There's no one with deep psychological problems trying to defeat Jason, no gratuitous sex or nudity scenes and there's no sense of suspense or build-up to it anymore. Why is that a good thing? In this context, and as stated previously, these films are so played out that a sequel that would try to be genuinely suspenseful would just fall flat on its face. This film is having fun with the series, and it shows. Hell, they even have a scene that pays homage to The New Blood when Jason walks into a holodeck-type area and is made to believe that there are a couple of teenagers looking to party and have sex. He immediately bashes them while they're in their sleeping bags. They also have a similar scene earlier in the film where Jason walks into that same area and thinks he's killed one of the main characters, just to find that it was all a computer simulation. He immediately afterwards kills the character for real.

There's also a bit of set up and pay off, or even building up the reality of the film. Early on, when they discover Jason's frozen corpse, he's accidentally knocked over and cuts off one of the character's arms. Causing little to no fuss, they use a futuristic method of cauterizing the wound, bring the severed arm with them, and re-attach it on the ship. It seems frivolous but it actually sets up that these people have the technology to combat things like severed limbs or damaged tissue. It also sets up the nanobots table, which are little mechanical spiders that are used to bring the frozen lead actress back to life, repairing damaged tissue in the process. It's also, of course, used to the nth degree with Jason later in the film. This is also another entry where everybody knows about Jason early on, which I like.

In all actuality, there's no way to really do a sequel to this series (or a remake, for that matter) without it being laughed at in some way. It's when the filmmakers have a passion for it and try to do something creative and fun with it that it's most effective, which is the case with Jason X. I'm sure I'm going to be accused of having double standards with my opinions regarding this series, but whatever the reasons, this concept and the way that it's executed just works for me. It's by no means perfect, or even a great slasher movie. It's a tired slasher movie that tries to have fun, and be a little meta at the same time.

Debuting on April 26, 2002, Jason X had a mixed reception from critics and fans alike. It made its money back at the box office, but wasn't greeted with open arms very much. I think most people just couldn't get their heads around the concept: Jason goes into space, kills everyone and lands on a new planet at the end, where the cycle will start all over again. In other words, the series had come a very long way from a vengeful mother and her vengeful son reeking havoc on promiscuous teenagers. For me, the original films end on a high note, and I'm glad that we got one final good film in the series, as opposed to something really crappy.

New Line wasn’t completely done with Jason though. He returned the following year, 2003, for Freddy vs. Jason. Being that the film is generally contains more of a Nightmare on Elm Street plotline with merely elements of Jason and his story, I personally don't consider it canon with the Friday the 13th series. Also, I think I've covered it well enough elsewhere, so there's no need to re-review it. I generally enjoyed that film, and would have preferred it if they had left those characters alone afterwards. But, in the age of remaking anything and everything that has marquee value, Friday the 13th was by no means holy ground.

Friday the 13th (Remake)

After several years of silence on the Jason front, New Line Cinema decided to resurrect the franchise and remake Friday the 13th. They hired Platinum Dunes for the job, which is a company that was also behind the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Bringing on some of the creative people from Freddy VS. Jason, as well director Marcus Nispel, it could have gone either way. Hollywood today is more keen on remaking something that the public will recognize rather than spend money on something that's not a sure-fire money maker, and remaking Friday the 13th was one of the major cash cows left to plunder in the horror realm. In a way, they succeeded, but not without the usual drawbacks. I think the main thing that these remakes do is bring the original films to the attention of new audiences, which is definitely a good thing, but that's an organic process unto itself. You usually discover these movies at a young age through friends and family members most of the time and not by other means.

Friday redux (which is how I'd like to think of it) is not that bad at being what it is, I suppose, but it's not that good at bringing anything that new into the formula. It's just familiar retread. The filmmakers spend most of the time making Jason more reality-based than supernatural. For instance, Jason being in one place and then another so quickly was explained by him having underground tunnels all over the camp grounds. They also take the time in the opening moments to show him as a child seeing his mother being beheaded and finding a locket on her dead body with her picture inside it. In these remakes, there just seems to be this need to overexplain the characters and situations, and make them more relatable somehow. It's become a bit of a cliché, as have the remakes, but was it really necessary with Jason? Probably not all that much. The locket thing is fine (in and of itself), but they still ignore the lack of logic that Jason drowned and suddenly came back to life. The underground tunnel thing just felt unnecessary, but it also served another purpose.

In this film, Jason is purely a momma's boy. It goes to pathetic levels to show it, too. Jason even has a bed with his name carved into the headboard with the obligatory teddy bear on top of the blanket. There's even a moment when they show Jason having a flashback to the beheading of his mother while sharpening his machete (why would he do that?). It's that sympathy thing, not unlike Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, that makes it feel pathetic. Broad strokes are necessary when it comes to telling a backstory in these films. We don't need to sympathize with the killer. The moment that they take it too far is when Jason takes the lead girl prisoner because she's wearing his mother’s locket and she looks her. Listen, Jason doesn't take prisoners. He's not Leatherface. He murders without remorse and without the need to take prisoners. Hell, even in Part 2 when Ginny plays the trick on him that she's his mother and Jason realizes that she's not he still tries to kill her. You can fool Jason sometimes, but when it comes down to it, he'll flat out murder you. He's also a bit smarter and a more exacting killer. He's a lot of faster, of course, but he also has things like bear traps set up to catch people off guard. The latter changes aren’t terrible, I guess. Just something different.

As far as the characters themselves, they're slightly one-dimensional, and clichéd as all can be. It had to be intentional though, because there's no way that they made this film without realizing it at some point. Starting off you have the handsome hero, the dick boyfriend, the sweet girlfriend who hates the dick boyfriend but likes the handsome hero, the funny stoner Asian guy, the black guy who points out racism in every direction and tries to be tough, the blonde looking to have a good time and eventually goes bananas (but thankfully dies early before she gets annoying), the adventurous couple who get it early, and finally, the lead victim who overcomes the killer. It's formulaic and generally boring on that level. The only thing that's missing is a mouthy black woman or a creepy little girl. The flipside to this is that these people show more of their emotions than nearly anyone in the original series. It's just a sign of the times, I guess, but it's also how these movies are set up. There's a party, there's conflict between characters, characters die, the other characters find out about it and then its time to escape (or fight back, in some cases). In other words, what all of the other modern horror films are doing. The only character who has any real feeling or depth is the Asian guy, who actually gives the best performance in the film. I also like the local old woman, who's the harbinger of doom in this film, and seems to know everything about Jason and his mother. Unsurprisingly, the dialogue is pretty awful at times, including the last line right before Jason dies: "Say hello to mommy... in hell!"

On the other hand, the kills in Friday redux are actually pretty good, and some are even a bit on the visual side, such as the policeman's death. In the Killer Cut of the film, there's quite a bit of blood and gore, but much tamer in the theatrical version. The Asian guy's death, in particular, is quite brutal and bloody. Jason, being faster and more ferocious, really deals out some disgusting kills. He doesn't just stalk his prey slowly. He gets right in its face and kills it horribly, which to me leaves me scratching my head whenever they try to get me to relate to this guy. There's also quite a bit of nudity and sex in the film. Actually, much more than I would have expected. It's shocking what you can get away with in an R rated film nowadays compared to something like A New Beginning, which had a big chunk of a sex scene lifted out of it to satisfy the MPAA. Hell, even one of the kills with a girl being stabbed in the top of the head while she's under a pier unnecessarily shows her boobs, and that didn't get axed. I wasn't surprised by the nudity itself though. It's pretty much a given that someone could lose their top at any given moment in one of these films. That formula never changes.

The film is also shot competently. It looks good, but it also looks like most of the horror films coming out these days, including the Nispel-directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and The Cabin in the Woods. They all have a stylized look to them: dark, lots of shadows and washed out colors, except for the blood. Even the shaky cam is surprisingly used appropriately. There's some general atmosphere to everything, and a lot of work seems to have went into the set decorating to make things creepy at times, but it doesn't totally succeed in that regard (but not for lack of trying). The score is made up of synth and rock. It's mediocre, but it's also used sparingly, so that's ok I guess. There are also lots of similarities between the film and the original series, mainly the first three films. The barn from Part 3 makes a return and the ending borrows quite a bit from Part 2 with the girl who looks like Jason's mother pretending to be his mother briefly to distract him. Jason also starts out wearing the potato sack and later finds the hockey mask, which they made into a slightly epic moment. They also pay homage to Jaws in one scene where they filmed a nude girl underwater, which logically makes no sense because it turns out that Jason isn't in the water, but whatever. They also changed the ending for there to be a jump scare and the possibility of a sequel, which is totally demeaning to a horror film, as well as a cliché these days (see The Strangers for the best example). So there's a various amount of elements at play in this film that doesn't really hold up together as a single entity.

Released on February 13, 2009, Friday the 13th redux brought in quite a bit of business to the box office, mainly because of the value of the name, and Jason, of course. It was met with some positive feedback, but the overall feeling was that it wasn't necessary in the first place, which is how I felt about it. It's watchable, and not all that insulting, but not all that memorable either. That's about all I can say about it really. And as of this writing, the franchise ends here. There are talks of making a sequel to the remake, but so far, nothing has come to fruition. I'd like to see it stay that way, but I have no say in that regard, do I?

"Ma'am, we didn't find no boy..."

I would be neglectful in not mentioning the documentary made by the good folks who did the Nightmare on Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th was released by Paramount Pictures to coincide with the release of the remake by New Line Cinema. Overall, I didn't care for the documentary all that much because it didn't seem to cover much ground with the filmmakers and crew members and brushed over a lot of the more interesting details. It just seemed to be more geared towards fan gushing, and was more of a studio-controlled project, which is why it turned out the way it did, unfortunately.

Thankfully, that will change in June of 2013. The makers of that documentary have returned to the series to create "The Definite Documentary" on the series called Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th. The word on the grapevine is that it will dwarf the Never Sleep Again documentary's running time (which was four hours). I look forward to it, and I also hope they dig into the Friday the 13th TV show a bit, which I'm sure they will. They're a pretty thorough crew of filmmakers and really good at what they do.

For those who want to learn more about it, visit the documentary's Facebook page here.

"Then he's still there..."

In closing, I'd just like to take a moment to tip my cap to the cast and crew of all of the Friday the 13th films, both living and deceased. To those who've worked on this series of films over the years, I hope there's no hard feelings over some of the things I've said. These are purely the opinions of a fan who appreciates the films, even the bad ones, and tries to find something positive about each and everyone one of them (even the ones I don't like). I love these films and it's been a great opportunity to talk about them. I'd also like to thank the continued support of the crew behind the Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories documentaries.

And as always, I'd like to thank my fellow cohorts at The Digital Bits for their constant support and never-ending inspiration, as well as the people taking the time to read this thing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Until next time...